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After eight plainclothes police officers were gunned down in a Cairo suburb on Sunday, the Islamic State released a statement taking responsibility for the attack, CNN reports.

According to Egyptian officials, the officers were conducting routine security checks when four gunman fired on their unmarked minivan with automatic weapons. From The Washington Post:

It was the deadliest assault on security forces since November, when gunmen killed four police officers at a security checkpoint. In that attack, Wilayat Sinai, the local Islamic State branch, claimed responsibility. If it is also behind Sunday’s attack, it would further highlight the terrorist network’s capabilities of striking inside the Egyptian capital.

The Islamic State said in a statement on Twitter that “a carefully selected group of the soldiers of the caliphate” carried out the killings. It claimed that it seized weapons “as booty” and that the attack was in retaliation for the incarceration of women in “Egypt’s infidel prisons.”

The Post reports the ambush comes amid a brutal police crackdown on political dissent in Egypt’s capital, making the attack especially bold.

“These are the heroes of the police,” Egyptian Minister of the Interior Magdy Abdel Ghaffar said on television Sunday. “We will continue our crusade against terrorism despite everything.”