Two veiled women opened fire on a bus carrying foreign tourists and the fiance of one of the woman blew himself up when he leaped off a bridge during a police chase in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Saturday.
Seven people were hurt by the explosion, three Egyptians, an Israeli couple, a Swedish man and an Italian woman. The blast, a nail bomb, went off in a crowded square between an exclusive hotel on the banks of the Nile and the Egyptian museum.
Two Egyptians were hurt in the shooting when the woman targeted a tour bus headed towards one of Cairo’s most prominent historic Islamic sites. The two woman followed the bus by car and fired through the back window. They then shot themselves, although witnesses said police had opened fire. One died at once, the other in hospital.
An Interior Ministry statement identified the man killed in the explosion as Ehab Yousri Yassin, and said that he jumped from a bridge during a pursuit, setting off the explosives he was carrying. Earlier two other men had been captured. They were being hunted as a suspect in the bombing of foreigners near a tourist bazaar on 7 April.
The ministry said the two woman were Yassin’s sister and fiancee. Late yesterday pools of blood lay on the street in the Sayeda Aisha area of medieval Islamic Cairo, where the shooting took place, a witness said. At least one pistol lay on the street and what appeared to be women’s black gloves lay in the road.
Two militant groups posted web statements claiming responsibility for the twin attacks – the Mujahedeen of Egypt and the Abdullah Azzam Brigades. Neither claim’s authenticity could be verified.
The Abdullah Azzam Brigades said yesterday’s violence was in revenge for the arrests of thousands of people in Sinai after bombings last October in Taba and another Sinai resort, in which 34 people were killed – and which it also claimed to have carried out. Egyptian authorities have said that attack was connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not domestic violence. They have insisted the attack on 7 April at Khan el-Khalili was carried out by a limited cell and does not represent a revival of major militant groups.
At the scene of the explosions the remains of a body, covered with newspapers, were seen beneath a bridge close to the scene a few minutes after the 3.15pm explosion was heard through downtown Cairo.
The injured Swede – sitting upright in a stretcher with his bloody hands held to his face – was lifted by paramedics into an ambulance. Sitting upright, he held his hands to his face as paramedics loaded the stretcher into an ambulance.
On a nearby pavement, two Westerners checked their wounds; the young woman’s left arm was covered in blood and the man sitting next to her appeared to have sustained leg injuries.
‘I heard a very loud explosion after what looked like a man throwing a bomb down from the bridge,’ said Mohammed Hasan Mohammed, 45.
The blast was the second bomb attack in the vicinity of major Cairo tourist attractions in less than a month. The 7 April attack by a suicide bomber killed two French citizens, an American and himself.
The explosion yesterday was caused by a very primitive bomb full of nails, the health minister Mohammed Awad Tag Eddin said.
During the Nineties, Islamic insurgents mounted several attacks on tourists in a bid to cripple the country’s tourism industry and bring down the government. – Guardian Unlimited Â