200 held in Egypt after tour bus attack
The records of the detainees, from the villages of al-Ammar and Ezbet al-Gabalawi north of Cairo, are being examined for any connections with local terror networks, police said.
On Saturday afternoon, a man identified as a suspect in an April 7 bombing blew himself up as he leapt off a bridge during a police chase, officials said.
Less than two hours later, two veiled women reportedly the man's sister and fiancée attacked a tour bus. Egyptian police officials and the government-guided Al-Ahram newspaper said the bus was carrying Israeli tourists.
Nine people, four of them foreigners, were wounded in the apparent revival of violence against Egypt's vital tourism industry.
Egyptian authorities denied major militant groups have returned to the violence that plagued the country during a bloody campaign by Islamic extremists in the 1990s.
They said Saturday's violence was a result of the government crackdown on a small militant cell it says carried out the April 7 suicide bombing near a Cairo tourist bazaar that killed two French tourists and an American.
Tourism is Egypt's biggest foreign currency earner, and the industry had made a strong recovery after the 1990s violence.
In an official statement yesterday, the opposition Al-Ghad Party said the violence was the result of the "environment of oppression and depression," a reference to the emergency laws the country has lived under since 1981.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, said the attacks were "illogical and irresponsible" and condemned by tradition and religion.
Saturday's attacks occurred within two hours and at locations just two and a half miles apart.
The Interior Ministry said police earlier in the day captured two suspects Ashraf Saeed Youssef and Gamal Ahmed Abdel Aal in connection with the bazaar bombing in April and were chasing a third, Ehab Yousri Yassin, on a highway overpass when he jumped off, setting off the nail-filled bomb.
The explosion in the centre of Cairo, near the Egyptian Museum, injured three Egyptians, an Israeli couple, a Swedish man and an Italian woman.
The two women who carried out the later shooting attack near the prominent historic Citadel site were identified as Negat Yassin, the bomber's sister, and Iman Ibrahim Khamis, his fiancee, both in their 20s.
