Egypt Minister Hurt, 4 Killed in Bomb Attack : Mideast: Assassination bid could signal renewal of violence in capital by Islamic extremists.

Striking near the seat of government power, suspected Islamic militants ambushed a motorcade with gunfire and a bomb Wednesday in an attempt to kill the man in charge of crushing their rebellion.

At least four people were killed, but their target, Interior Minister Hassan Alfi, escaped with an arm injury after his bodyguard took the brunt of the blast of TNT and ball bearings. The militants then opened up with machine guns on a downtown street near government buildings and the U.S. Embassy.

The attack--remarkable for its location and midday timing--could signal a return of extremist violence to the capital after a series of attacks in southern Egypt.

The government also reported that at least 15 people were wounded. Many of the casualties were passers-by hit by fragments.

Alfi, 57, who was wounded in the right arm, denounced the radicals from his hospital bed.

“These terrorists are killers and butchers who have no religion or conscience. . . . We urge all citizens to fight them,” Alfi said in a television interview.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but officials blamed Muslim radicals.

As interior minister, Alfi is in charge of police responsible for putting down the 19-month campaign by Muslim radicals to topple the secular government and install Islamic rule. When the attack came, he was apparently on his way to the ministry a block away.

“We heard a bomb and then shooting,” said Saladin Hanafi, a worker at a nearby school. “We saw the minister hauled out of the car with blood on his arm.”

Hanafi said he saw five or six bodies of dead or wounded on the ground, including a small girl.

An Interior Ministry statement said that only the bomb was used in the attack. But several witnesses said gunmen opened fire. A security guard from a nearby said four or five attackers fired.

The attack and the shooting Monday on a Nile River tourist boat followed a lull of more than two months in extremist attacks on leading government officials and foreign tourists. No one was hurt in the Nile attack.