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Three Egyptian police officers were killed and eight others injured in a shoot-out during a raid on a suspected terrorist hideout in Giza, southwest of Cairo, two security sources said on Friday.

According to Reuters, the sources said authorities were following a lead to an apartment thought to house eight suspected members of Hasm, a group which has claimed several attacks around the capital targeting judges and policemen since last year.

The suspected jihadists fled after the exchange of fire there, the sources said.

Egypt accuses Hasm of being a wing of the banned Muslim Brotherhood organization which was outlawed in 2013. The Muslim Brotherhood denies this.

In addition to Hasm, Egypt has in recent years been fighting an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula which has grown since the military overthrew Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi in mid-2013.

Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, the group staging the insurgency in the Sinai, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS) in 2014 and is now known as Sinai Province.

It is blamed for the killing of hundreds of soldiers and policemen and has started to target other areas, including Egypt’s Christian Copts.

(Arutz Sheva’s North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Arutz Sheva articles, however, is Israeli time.)