French schoolgirl victim of Cairo bomb

The victim of a terrorist bombing in a crowded Cairo tourist spot was a French teenage girl on a school trip, it emerged today.

The 17-year-old was killed and 19 of her classmates injured in the explosion at the sprawling Khan el-Khalili market last night.

The explosion hit the busy main square when it was packed with tourists.

The girl, whose name has not been released, was with 41 other teenage students, said Patrick Balkany, mayor of her hometown, Levallois-Perret, a Paris suburb.

The students were nearing the end of their trip when the attack occurred, Mr Balkany said.

Some of the surviving students have serious wounds, and others suffered psychological shock from the “horror” of the experience.

“We are faced with a dreadful drama,” Mr Balkany said.

France’s prime minister, Francois Fillon, denounced what he called an “odious attack.”

“There are people who want to destabilise Egypt, which is one of the moderate countries in the region,” he said. “It is an illustration of the violence that we must eradicate.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing. Islamic extremists have in the past attacked tourists in an attempt to hurt Egypt’s biggest source of income.

Yesterday’s attack – the first on tourists in three years – came as the tourist industry suffers under the global financial crisis, which has meant fewer visitors to the country.

The Khan el-Khalili, a 650-year-old bazaar of narrow, winding alleys dotted with old Islamic mosques and monuments and shops, is one of the top tourist spots in Cairo, often crowded with foreigners.

In April 2005 a suicide bomber in the market killed himself, two French people and an American.

Yesterday’s bomb was packed with TNT and explosive black powder and placed under a bench in a busy square in front of one of Cairo’s most revered shrines, the Hussein mosque.

Security officials said three people were in custody. Authorities safely detonated a second bomb that was found.

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-Sheik.

However tourism has proven resilient with foreigners still pouring in for Egypt’s resorts and antiquity.

The attack is likely to have little long-term impact, said tourist experts.