Egypt state prosecutor killed in Cairo bomb attack

Egypt's state prosecutor Hisham Barakat has been killed after his motorcade was hit by a bomb blast in the capital Cairo.

An earlier report said that Barakat had been suffering from "internal bleeding" and that he was undergoing surgery on Monday at the Nozha hospital in the Egyptian capital.

The attack took place in the Heliopolis district of the capital.Local newspaper Al-Ahram reported that the attack took place outside Cairo's military college and that

Barakat had been taken to al-Nozha hospital, also in Heliopolis.

Barakat was appointed prosecutor-general by Egypt's then interim-President Adly Mansour in July 2013, shortly after the military ousted the country's first freely elected president, Mohamed Morsi.

The new state prosecutor then set about freezing the assets of 15 prominent members of the Muslim Brotherhood and ordered the arrest of the group's leader,

Mohamed Badie, on charges of inciting violence outside the Republican Guard headquarters where 51 people were killed.

The country has since sentenced Morsi, and hundred of his supporters, to death, in mass trials that have been condemned by rights groups.