Explosion in Cairo Tourist District Kills Two

An explosion in a bustling market in the tourist-packed heart of Cairo’s old city killed two people Thursday and wounded at least 18. Some witnesses reported that a man on a motorbike set off the blast.

The old bazaar near Al Azhar Mosque, a popular tourist draw, was sealed off Thursday night as investigators combed the narrow alleyways for clues. Witnesses said the blast shattered shop windows and left dead and wounded sprawled in the streets.

The late afternoon blast was the first bombing that appeared to target tourists in Cairo in almost eight years. The attack was reminiscent of the bloody battles waged against vacationers in the 1990s by Islamist militants who targeted the tourism industry in hope of undermining the government.

The attack comes six months after a string of coordinated explosions rocked hotels in the Sinai Peninsula, killing 34 people.

Early accounts of Thursday’s bombing were jumbled. A Health Ministry official at first announced that an American and a French citizen had been killed in the blast. Later, the health minister announced that a French citizen had been killed but that the other body was too mangled to identify. The government confirmed two deaths, but local news reports placed the death toll as high as four.

An Egyptian woman who witnessed the attack said she was shopping at a nearby store when she heard “a boom, a horrible sound, very loud.”

“Everyone started running.”

The witness, Rabab Rifaat, told Associated Press that she had seen a severed head flying through the air.

Two Americans were among the wounded, along with citizens of France, Italy, Turkey and Egypt, a Health Ministry official said. Witnesses described a man on a motorcycle who they said had set off the blast. A security source said somebody pushed the bomb-laden motorcycle onto the narrow street and then ran away.

The winding labyrinths of stalls and shops are a draw for many of the tourists who visit Cairo. In the teeming streets, aggressive peddlers hawk a variety of goods, including brass lamps, fresh spices and sequined polyester belly-dancing costumes.

The bazaars lie close to the mosque and Al Azhar University, where students from all over the Muslim world come to study at one of the most respected seats of learning in Sunni Islam.

The explosion wasn’t the first time that the bazaar had been targeted. In 1997, Egyptian security agents rounded up members of an Islamic Jihad cell on charges of plotting an attack against Israeli tourists who were to visit the shopping area.

The government waged a ruthless campaign against armed Islamists throughout the 1990s, and was credited with breaking down the militant groups by the end of the decade. Until bombers struck Sinai last fall, conventional wisdom held that Egypt’s security services had effectively clamped down on terrorism. Most of the former fighters either renounced violence or were imprisoned, killed or fled from Egypt.

“All the Islamist forces who have the capability to carry out such an attack have renounced violence already,” said Mohammed Hashem, an Islamist lawyer and former member of the Gamaa al Islamiya militant group.

“What happened today is very strange,” said Diaa Rashwan, an expert on militant Islam at the Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “It could be that some individual or two or three people decided to imitate what’s happening in other parts of the Middle East, to make their duty against Americans or foreigners in general.”

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Special correspondent Hossam Hamalawy contributed to this report.