Tourists injured in Cairo bazaar blast

An explosion in a bazaar popular with tourists near Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque today killed one person and wounded five others.

It appeared that at least some tourists were among the wounded, police said. Their nationalities were not known.

Police were investigating reports that the blast came from a person on a motorcycle.

A number of tourist bazaars surround al-Azhar, one of the most prestigious Islamic institutions in the Sunni Muslim world, in Cairo’s old city.

Egypt has largely seen calm since it suppressed a fierce campaign of violence by Islamic militants in the early 1990s.

The last militant attack in the Egyptian capital came in September 1997, when two gunmen fired automatic rifles at a tour bus parked outside the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo, killing 12 people – mostly German tourists.

Last October, explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai Peninsula, including one in the resort of Taba, killing 34 people, and Egyptian authorities have linked the blast to Israeli-Palestinian violence.