20 dead in Egypt after a terrorist car bombing.

A man carries his son, who has cancer. Reuters. 

20 people are dead and 47 people are injured after a car bombing and fire outside of Cairo's main cancer hospital. Reuters. The incident occurred after a multi vehicle car crash. The driver of the car fled the scene shortly before the bomb inside exploded. The explosion damaged the hospital and forced a partial evacuation of patients due to a fire caused by the bomb. It is unclear whether the hospital was the target for the attack or if the bomber survived the blast. Egypt has blamed the attack on the Hasm group, which is a faction of the banned Muslim Brotherhood. 

My Comment:

Very strange incident. The attacker was driving the wrong way on the street and caused a multiple vehicle car crash. That makes very little sense to me as you would think that if you were carrying a bomb you would drive as carefully as possible. Makes me wonder if the bomber wasn't being pursued by the police or was on a timer that required reckless driving. 

I doubt that the cancer hospital was the real target. Blowing up a hospital full of sick people is low even for a terror group. My guess is that the bomber panicked after the car accident and just decided to detonate the bomb where it was. 

Since the attack was in Cairo my guess the real target was one of the many tourist areas in the city. Terror groups usually target westerners and I am guessing that the true target was them. With the plan failing though I think the bomber just decided to cut his losses and blow up his bomb.

I don't know much about the Hasm group. They are a terror group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, who are themselves designated a terror group by some countries. They are certainly capable of doing something like this but I do wonder if it wasn't someone else. 

ISIS is the elephant in the room here. They have a long history of terrible terror attacks in Egypt. They took down the Russian jet that killed 200+ people. And they certainly could build a car bomb and use it in this way. 

The problem with it being ISIS is that the terror group is usually only active in the Sinai Peninsula. They have launched attacks elsewhere but they are mostly confined to the peninsula. Plus they haven't taken credit for the attack and the Egyptian government says they didn't do it. 

All that being said it's another example of terrorism. With all the focus on left wing and right wing terrorism it's important to note that the threat of Islamic terrorism hasn't really gone away. Though ISIS has been reduced, other terror groups, like the Hasm group, are ready to take up the reigns. And it's not like ISIS has been completely defeated. Islamic terrorism is a threat that is going to continue for a long time.