An American tourist died on Friday from wounds sustained in a bomb blast that rocked a Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners, a United States Embassy spokesperson said, taking the death toll in the Egyptian capital’s first such attack in seven years to three.
Another three Americans were among the 18 people injured in Thursday’s explosion in a packed bazaar area in Cairo’s old city, which also killed a French woman and another person whose identity has not yet been revealed and who police say may have been the bomber.
”One of the Americans has died as a result of the wounds from the bombing early this [Friday] morning,” embassy spokesperson Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm said. She confirmed that there were three other wounded Americans but provided no further details.
Along with the Americans, four Egyptians, and a Frenchman, who is in critical condition, and his wife remain in hospital, Egyptian Tourism Minister Ahmed El Maghraby said. He said the American who died and the others who were wounded were all in their early 20s.
Another French person, one Turk and several Egyptians, who were wounded, have been released from hospital. Many of the wounded suffered severe wounds from nails packed in the bomb.
The Interior Ministry also said an Italian was injured, but Italian diplomats leaving the hospital later said there were no Italians among the casualties and there was no explanation for the discrepancy.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the blast, which witnesses said appeared to have been set off by a man on a motorcycle. The attack comes after years of calm in which Egypt has rebuilt its vital tourism industry, which was devastated by the campaign of violence waged by Islamic militants in the 1990s.
El Maghraby said he had no details on who was responsible for the attack but said similar attacks in the past have ”turned out to be the act of one individual or a very small group of people”.
While condemning the blast, El Maghraby also called for calm and said tourists should not be scared away from travelling to Egypt.
”These are actions totally unacceptable by any human being, but these events do happen and life has to continue,” El Maghraby said while visiting the wounded people in a Cairo hospital. ”We should not be intimated and lose our right to free movement.”
On Friday, hundreds of police sealed off a 400 metre stretch of road lined by two and three story rundown warehouses and stores where the blast took place as investigators interviewed shop owners for clues.
Blood stains remained on the road and on the second-story wall of a building in the al-Moski bazaar, a maze of narrow alleys with shops selling jewellery, souvenirs and clothes connected to the biggest tourist souk, Khan al-Khalili.
Amin al-Laban, a 51-year-old spice store owner in the street where the blast occurred, said his 22-year-old son, Mohamed, was injured in the massive explosion.
”The blast was so big that I thought that the building above my shop collapsed, when I came out to check on Mohamed, I could not see anything from the black dust,” the elder al-Laban said.
The US Embassy in Cairo issued a statement warning Americans to stay away from Khan al-Khalili and to use prudence elsewhere in the city.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamic group, which was outlawed in 1954, denounced the bombing and said it should not be used to ”derail” Egypt’s growing reform movement.
”This cowardly act does not reflect at all the real Egyptian people’s attitude,” said Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef.
”We call on our people to unite against such acts, which are odd to the nature of the Egyptian people.”
Police said they have taken two people in for questioning and were investigating a motorcycle found near the scene with nails scattered on the ground around it. Police say initial investigations suggested the explosive was a home-made nail-packed bomb that went off prematurely, killing the man who was carrying it.
The last significant attack on tourists in Cairo was in 1997, a year when another 62 were killed in another attack in Luxor. Last October, explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai Peninsula, including one in the resort of Taba, killing 34 people. Egyptian authorities say that attack was linked to Israeli-Palestinian violence. — Sapa-AP