Woman killed in terror attack in Cairo

An explosion ripped into a famous bazaar in Cairo, killing a French woman and wounding at least 21 people, most of them foreigners.

An expert on Islamic extremism said yesterday’s attack might have been a response to Israel’s deadly offensive in Gaza last month.

Tourism is one of Egypt’s major sources of foreign income and has been a target in past attempts to harm the government, which is now trying to negotiate a long-term Gaza ceasefire. Yesterday’s attack was the first on tourists in three years.

The blast hit the bustling main plaza at the Khan el-Khalili, a 650-year-old bazaar packed with tourists next to one of Cairo’s most revered shrines, the Hussein mosque.

Within an hour, police found a second explosive device and detonated it safely. Security officials said three people were in custody.

Montasser el-Zayat, a lawyer who has represented Islamic extremists, told Arabic news channel al-Jazeera the attack may be linked to anger over the Israeli offensive.

“The nature of the explosion looks like an act carried out by young, inexperienced amateurs whose emotions were inflamed by the events of Gaza,” said Mr el-Zayat, who once had links with extremist groups himself.

Egypt has been trying to broker a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas militants who run Gaza. A fragile truce has been in place since Israel’s offensive left about 1,300 Palestinians dead.

Initial reports on the attack said a pair of grenades were thrown, but a government statement said the attack involved a home-made bomb placed under a bench in the main plaza.

“We were serving our customers as usual and all of a sudden there was a large sound,” said Magdy Ragab, 42, a waiter at a nearby cafe. “We saw heavy grey smoke and there were people running everywhere ... Some people were injured by the stampede, not the shrapnel.”

A medic at the scene said the woman died in the intensive care unit of the nearby Hussein hospital.

The wounded included three Saudis, 13 French, a German and four Egyptians, including a child, the government said. The health minister said the injuries were comparatively minor and most of the wounded would be released from the hospital by today.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his condolences to the victim’s family and said he was confident that Egyptian authorities would “shed light on the circumstances of this tragedy”.

Blood stains marked the stones in front of the Hussein mosque where worshippers had been conducting evening prayers.

“I was praying and there was a big boom and people started panicking and rushing out of the mosque, then police came and sealed the main door, evacuating us out of the back,” said Mohammed Abdel Azim, 56.

Egypt fought a long war with Islamist militants in the 1990s, culminating in a massacre of more than 50 tourists in Luxor in 1997. The rebels were largely defeated and there have been few attacks since then in the Nile valley.

But from 2004 to 2006, a string of bombings against resorts in the Sinai Peninsula killed 120 people, including in the Sinai’s main resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

Cairo’s Khan el-Khalili has been targeted before as well. In April 2005, a suicide bomber killed two French citizens and an American.

One of Egypt’s highest religious officials, Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, called yesterday’s attack “cowardly and criminal”.

“Those who carried out this criminal act are traitors to their religion and country and are distorting the image of Islam, which rejects terrorism and prohibits the killing of innocents,” he said.