Tourists visit the historical site of the Giza Pyramids in Giza, near Cairo, Egypt, Wednesday, March 5, 2014.

Four people including two Egyptian policemen were wounded Friday in a failed attempt to dismantle a bomb outside a Cairo hotel near the pyramids, a security official said.

Two policemen and two hotel security guards were wounded as they tried to deactivate the explosive device found by security guards outside the Meridien hotel near the Giza pyramids, he said.

The blast left one of the policemen in critical condition.

Elsewhere in Egypt, four policemen were wounded in the North Sinai town of El-Arish in an explosion as they drove past in an armored vehicle.

North Sinai, where security forces are fighting an Islamist insurgency, is a bastion of the Egyptian affiliate of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group.

The insurgency has swelled since the army’s ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July 2013.

Militants loyal to ISIS have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and policemen, mostly in North Sinai.

A government crackdown targeting Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood movement since 2013 has left hundreds dead and thousands jailed.

Hundreds more, including Mursi himself, have been sentenced to death after speedy trials.