CAIRO: Egypt’s army chief Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sissi, who led the ouster of President Muhammad Mursi, vowed Thursday to fight terrorism and stabilize the deeply polarized country.

“Do not worry or fear, the army will sacrifice for Egypt. We will eliminate” terrorism, Sissi said at a military ceremony, in his first comments after Egypt was rocked by two bomb attacks this week.

“Do not allow these terrorist actions to affect you. If you want freedom and stability, which is not achieved easily, then you have to trust God and your army and your police,” said Sissi, who is also defense minister, in a statement released by the army.

Sissi, whose popularity has soared since he ousted Mursi, said the defense forces had the capability to make Egypt “stable, secure and progressive.”

Meanwhile, a bomb wounded five people when it exploded near a Cairo bus Thursday, officials said, as authorities began rounding up members of the Muslim Brotherhood after declaring it a terrorist group.

The explosion shattered the windows of the red and black bus as it passed near a busy intersection in the capital’s northern neighborhood of Nasr City.

Police defused a second bomb at the site and cordoned off the area as sniffer dogs searched for more explosive devices, an AFP correspondent said.

Following Thursday’s blast in Nasr City, police chief Mohamed Gamal showed reporters a defused pipe bomb he said had been placed inside a nearby advertising display and primed to explode when police arrived at the scene.

“It was set to go off remotely,” Interior Ministry spokesman Hany Abdel Latif told AFP, adding the bombs were “meant to terrorize people before the referendum.”

A witness described scenes of panic after the attack.

“I was 100 meters away when I heard the explosion. I came running to help the wounded,” said Mahmud Abd Al-Al, a construction worker.

“They were covered in blood. One man lost a leg,” he said.