Train (illustration)
Train (illustration)Thinkstock

A bomb went off near a train station in southern Egypt Saturday night, as police found three other explosive devices planted on railway tracks in the region, the government said, according to AFP.

A charred body was found near the railway station in Wasta, a town in the province of Beni Suef, the interior ministry said, adding it probably belonged to the person who had planted the bomb.

Security forces combed the region and found three other explosive devices on railway lines linking Cairo to the far southern city of Aswan, the ministry said in a statement quoted by the news agency.

Egypt has been hit by a wave of bombings and shootings since the military ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July 2013.

Assailants have stepped up attacks targeting public transport, including a bomb last week on a train north of Cairo that killed two policemen and two passengers.

Another recent attack targeted a navy vessel in the Mediterranean and left eight servicemen missing at sea.

On Thursday four people were hurt in a stampede at the capital’s Ramses station after a blast inside a compartment of a train that pulled in from the Nile Delta, security officials said.

The majority of the attacks in Egypt have been claimed by the jihadist Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, which has killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police over the last year.

Among the attacks claimed by the group since the ouster of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi was the assassination of a top Egyptian police general, who was gunned down as he left his home in a west Cairo neighborhood, and a bus bombing on a tour bus filled with South Korean tourists in the Sinai.