Bomb kills policeman outside hotel in Egypt's north Sinai

Cairo (AFP) - At least one policeman was killed in a car bombing on Tuesday outside a northern Sinai hotel hosting judges who had been overseeing Egypt's parliamentary election, officials said.

Nine people were wounded in the blast outside the Swiss Inn hotel in El-Arish, the provincial capital of North Sinai where Islamist militants are waging an insurgency, state media reported.

State television aired footage of shattered hotel windows and a charred limb, and car parts flung into a hotel terrace by the blast.

Egypt held its second round of parliamentary elections on Sunday and Monday, its first legislative vote since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Morsi's ouster unleashed a deadly police crackdown on his followers, and fuelled an Islamist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Jihadists there who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group have killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.

They have also claimed responsibility for bombing a Russian passenger plane after it left the south Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on October 31, killing all 224 people on board.

Unlike the north of the peninsula, which has become a jihadist stronghold and is off limits to tourists, south Sinai is dotted with heavily secured Red Sea resorts.