Militants claim Cairo blast that killed six police

By Giles Elgood CAIRO (Reuters) - A recently emerged Egyptian militant group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack in Cairo on Friday that killed six policemen and wounded three others. The Hasm Movement, which has claimed several attacks in Egypt in recent months, said it set off the bomb which security sources said also injured four civilians. The attack, at a police checkpoint on a main road that leads to the Pyramids, was the latest in a series of security incidents in Egypt claimed by radical Islamists. The policemen were either in or near their car when the device went off, the security sources said. The interior ministry said a security cordon had been thrown around the scene of the attack near a mosque. Eyewitness Ahmed Al-Deeb described a scene of carnage, with dead and dying policemen lying next to wrecked cars. One of the policemen had blast fragments in his chest and two more had lost legs, he told Reuters Television. Security forces killed three gunmen on Tuesday in a raid on a hideout in southern Egypt they said was used by Hasm, which they described as an armed wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. SINAI INSURGENCY Hasm, the Arabic word for decisiveness, has accused judges of sentencing thousands of innocent defendants to death, or jailing them for life, at the behest of the military. Egyptian judges have issued death sentences against hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters since 2013, when President Mohamed Mursi, a member of the group, was overthrown by the army and arrested. The Brotherhood, which won Egypt's first free elections after the 2011 uprising that ended Hosni Mubarak's 30 years in power, has since been banned and its leaders and members have largely been imprisoned or driven into exile or underground. Since the crackdown, other small groups, including Hasm, have emerged. Hasm claimed responsibility in September for an assassination attempt on a senior prosecutor. Militants loyal to Islamic State are meanwhile waging an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, killing hundreds of soldiers and police. Judges, policemen and senior officials have been targeted by radical Islamists angered by long prison sentences imposed on members of the Brotherhood. (Reporting by Mohamed Elsherif and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan; Writing by Giles Elgood; Editing by Ralph Boulton)