CAIRO, Feb 19 (NNN-AGENCIES) – An explosion in Cairo on Monday killed two policemen who were chasing a man believed to have targeted security staff near a mosque last week, Egypt’s interior ministry said.
“As security surrounded the man and was set to arrest and control him, an
explosive device in his possession went off,” the ministry said.
The blast in the crowded Darb al-Ahmar district in downtown Cairo also
killed the bomber and injured three other policemen.
The man was being pursued as part of “efforts to search for the
perpetrator” responsible for planting an explosive device near security staff
close to a mosque in Giza on Friday, the ministry said.
Security had been able to defuse that device, the ministry said.
Monday’s explosion took place near Al Azhar mosque at the heart of ancient
Islamic Cairo, damaging several shops.
The site was cordoned off and reporters were not immediately allowed access to the area.
“My shop’s front and windows were destroyed,” said Kareem Sayed Awad, a
barbershop owner. “Not only that, but people have died. This is a tourist
area and such incidents affect it.”
Egypt’s tourism industry has been struggling to recover from attacks and
domestic instability that has hit the country in the years following a 2011
uprising that toppled longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.
In December three Vietnamese tourists and their Egyptian guide died when a homemade bomb exploded on their bus on the outskirts of Cairo, near the famed pyramids in Giza.
Authorities have been seeking to lure tourists back by touting new
archaeological discoveries and bolstering security around archaeological
sites and in airports.
Tourism has slowly started picking up. The official statistics agency says
tourist arrivals in Egypt in 2017 reached 8.3 million, up from 5.3 million
the year before.
But that figure was still far short of the record influx in 2010 when over
14 million visitors flocked to the country.
Egypt has also for years been battling an Islamist insurgency, which
deepened following military’s ousting of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
The attacks have been mainly concentrated in the restive northern Sinai
Peninsula but have also spread to the mainland.
In February 2018, security forces launched a major anti-militant operation
focused on the Sinai Peninsula, aimed at wiping out a local affiliate of the
Daesh group.
On Saturday, an attack on an Egyptian army checkpoint in north Sinai left
15 soldiers dead or wounded and seven of the suspected assailants
killed, according to the military. — NNN-AGENCIES
