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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Two Egyptian police officers were killed and six people wounded Monday when two bombs exploded near the main Cairo presidential palace, police said, days after Islamists warned they had planted explosives there.

It was not immediately clear if President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was at the palace at the time of the twin bombings.

Police officials said a first bomb went off wounding three street cleaners while the second exploded killing the colonel and wounding three policemen as bomb disposal experts were trying to defuse it.

The twin attacks occured on the day Egypt is preparing for celebrations to mark the anniversary of June 30 protests last year which lead to the ouster of Islamist President Mohammad Mursi.

There is expected to be a high turnout in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, where protests were staged last year demanding the “withdrawal of confidence” from then President Mursi.

Last year, a campaign saw mass protests calling for Mursi to step down exactly 12 months after he was inaugurated. The campaign, named Tamarod (Arabic for “rebellion”), accused Mursi of “threatening his own people” and rejected Muslim Brotherhood rule.

The protests led the then army chief Sisi to oust Mursi and announce the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court, Adly Mansour, as caretaker leader.

It has been a turbulent year for Egypt which has seen a new constitution and president be installed. Sisi resigned from the army and became a candidate in the presidential elections last month which he won by a landslide.

In a statement to the press on Monday, Cairo governor Dr. Mustafa Jalal al-Said has said that security forces will be on high alert throughout the day.

The last time large crowds gathered in the Square was during celebrations on Sisi’s inauguration day earlier this month. But the celebrations were mired by a sexual assault on a woman by a mob in the Square.

*Alarabiya