CAIRO: Egypt has seen state violence on an “unprecedented scale” since the army deposed President Muhammad Mursi last July following mass protests against his rule, Amnesty International said in a report on Thursday.

Interim Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, responded by saying critics were projecting “a distorted picture” by ignoring attacks on the security forces that have spiked since Mursi’s removal.

The Amnesty report came out two days before the third anniversary of the mass uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

It said the authorities “quash dissent and trample on human rights” with mass arrests, curbs on the freedom of expression and a new law that severely limits the right to protest.

About 1,400 people have been killed in political violence since army chief Abdel Fattah El-Sissi ousted Mursi, mostly due to “excessive force used by security forces,” the international human rights group said.

“There has been a distorted picture lately ... a fixation on activists going to prison,” Beblawi said during an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria as part of the official WEF program.

“There are killings of police. No one talks about it. There is no balanced picture,” he said.

Amnesty said: “Security forces have been given free rein to act above the law and with no prospect of being held to account for abuses.”

CAIRO: Masked gunmen riding on motorcycles opened fire at a police checkpoint in central Egypt early on Thursday, killing five policemen and wounding two, the Interior Ministry said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Egypt has seen a sharp rise in drive-by shootings and attacks targeting police and the military in the aftermath of the popularly-backed coup last July.

The most prominent attack was a failed assassination attempt on the interior minister in Cairo in September and the December suicide car bombing that targeted a security headquarters in the Nile Delta city of Mansoura, leaving nearly 16 dead, most of them policemen.

In Thursday’s attack, assailants on two motorcycles and armed with automatic weapons opened fire on the police checkpoint in El-Wassta district in the province of Bani Suief, south of the Egyptian capital, Cairo, according to a statement from the ministry.

The gunmen then fled the scene, said two security officials.