Attack on Tourist Bus Hurts 16 in Cairo; Islamic Extremists Suspected : Egypt: Gunfire, explosives wound eight Austrians and eight bystanders. No group claims responsibility. Militants have campaigned against tourism.

In a bloody footnote to what has already been one of the most violent months in Egypt’s history, suspected Islamic extremists opened fire Monday on a busload of Austrian tourists visiting an ancient church site that was said to have sheltered the holy family during their flight into Egypt.

Eight tourists were wounded, three of them seriously, and another eight bystanders were injured when gunmen attacked the bus with gunfire and explosives. It was one of the worst incidents yet in a continuing campaign against foreign tourism mounted by Islamic militants.

Authorities said they believed that the militant Jihad Organization, which was responsible for the 1981 assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, was behind the attack. No group claimed responsibility.

Egypt has been the scene of Middle East peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians in recent weeks, and the attack came just as negotiators were opening talks at a Cairo hotel to help conclude an accord on Palestinian self-rule in Gaza and the West Bank town of Jericho.

Islamic militants throughout the region have been bitterly opposed to the peace talks, which they see as a U.S.-led effort to waylay the Arabs from their goal of regaining all Arab lands lost to the state of Israel in 1948.

But the wave of violence in Egypt over the last 22 months has been primarily domestic in nature, aimed at toppling the government of President Hosni Mubarak and establishing an Islamic state in this most populous of Arab nations.

Hours after the bus attack, suspected Muslim militants killed three people in a raid on a Cairo jewelry shop, including the shop’s owner and his brother. Security sources said the raiders stole some gold, killed a third person on their way out and then escaped in a car.

Muslim militants have frequently raided jewelers’ shops, often owned by Christians, to raise money for their operations.

The campaign of violence--both on the side of the extremists and on the side of the government--has reached unprecedented proportions in the past month. The recent round of executions of convicted militants, 29 in total and six last week alone, is the largest in Egypt this century.

Faced with the executions and a sweeping new wave of arrests, Islamic militants have responded with a stepped-up campaign of terror.

Five police officers and four civilians were killed, and 14 others were wounded, in a shootout last week in the militant southern Egyptian town of Asyut. A few days later, 11 more died in Asyut in two other shootings, and in the same province Sunday four plainclothes policemen and a bystander were shot to death.

In yet another incident in Asyut on Monday, an unidentified civilian was killed and a second wounded in an exchange of fire between security services and Islamic militants.

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Cairo, the capital city that has its own problems with Islamic militancy in its teeming slums, has not been immune to the violence. Earlier this month, a top intelligence official was shot to death as he left his house in the city’s El Matariya district, and a leader of the militant group Gamaa al Islamiya (Islamic Group) told reporters that the campaign will not stop.

“There is no solution for this series of actions and reaction except if the ruling regime in Egypt stops its practices against members of the Islamic movement,” the spokesman told the Associated Press.

Tourist attacks had been declining in recent months, until Monday’s attack, and the nation’s troubled tourism industry had been experiencing an upswing, with 25,000 tourists arriving in the past several days for Christmas season visits.

But attacks in the past year, in which seven foreign tourists died, were responsible for huge revenue losses. Tourism Ministry officials told the Parliament that tourism revenues dropped $900 million, with a decline of 21.9% in tourism, although they attributed most of the loss to shortfalls in marketing.

Government officials have downplayed the effects of the militant attacks, which have totaled eight incidents since October, 1992.

In Monday’s bus attack, police said militants fired gunshots and lobbed at least two explosives at the busload of Austrians near Cairo’s historic Hanging Church, one of the oldest Christian churches in Egypt with parts dating to the 10th Century.

A popular tourist destination, especially during the Christmas season, the church is built on the site of a former Roman fortress that is said to have been one of the holy family’s resting spots as they fled to Egypt.

A total of 261 people have died in the wave of violence since the beginning of 1992.