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Bomb kills tourists in egyptian market place Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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American's Death Raises Cairo Bombing Toll
American Citizen Dies From Wounds Sustained in Cairo Bombing, Raising Death Toll to Three
By PAUL GARWOOD
The Associated Press
Apr. 8, 2005 - An American tourist died Friday from wounds sustained in a bomb blast that rocked a Cairo bazaar popular with foreigners, the U.S. Embassy said, raising the death toll from Thursday's attack to three.
Another three Americans were among the 18 people injured in the explosion in a packed bazaar area in Cairo's old city, which also killed a French woman and an unidentified person that police said may have been the bomber. It was the first such attack in the city in seven years.
Many of the wounded, who included Egyptians, French and a Turk, suffered severe wounds from nails packed in the bomb.
Nobody claimed responsibility for the blast, which apparently was set off by a man on a motorcycle. The attack comes after years of calm since Egypt suppressed Islamic militants, who in the 1990s carried out bombings and shootings against tourists in their campaign to bring down the government.
Police said they have taken two people in for questioning and were investigating a motorcycle found near the scene with nails scattered around it. Initial investigations suggested the explosive was a homemade nail-packed bomb that went off prematurely, killing the man who was carrying it, according to police.
Hundreds of police also sealed off a 400-yard stretch of road lined by rundown warehouses and stores where the blast took place, as investigators interviewed shop owners for clues.
Blood stains remained on the road and the second-story wall of a building in the al-Moski bazaar, a maze of narrow alleys with shops selling jewelry, souvenirs and clothes connected to the biggest tourist market, Khan al-Khalili.
Amin al-Laban, a 51-year-old spice store owner, said his 22-year-old son, Mohamed, was injured in the explosion.
"The blast was so big that I thought that the building above my shop collapsed, when I came out to check on Mohamed, I could not see anything from the black dust," the elder al-Laban said.
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Micaela Schweitzer-Bluhm said an American died Friday morning of wounds sustained in the blast and confirmed that three others were wounded, but she provided no other details.
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo also issued a statement warning Americans to stay away from Khan al-Khalili and to use prudence elsewhere in the city.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic group which was outlawed in 1954, denounced the bombing and said it should not be used to "derail" the nation's growing reform movement.
"This cowardly act does not reflect at all the real Egyptian people's attitude," group leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef said. "We call on our people to unite against such acts which are odd to the nature of the Egyptian people."
Tourism Minister Ahmed El Maghraby said he had no details on who was responsible for the blast but noted that similar attacks in the past have "turned out to be the act of one individual or a very small group of people."
El Maghraby condemned the attack but also called for calm and said tourists should not be scared away.
"We should not be intimated and lose our right to free movement," El Maghraby said while visiting the wounded people in a Cairo hospital.
The last significant attacks in Cairo were in 1997. That September, two gunmen fired on a tour bus outside the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo, killing 10 people. Two months later, militants killed 62 people in an attack at a pharaonic temple in Luxor.
In October 2004, explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai Peninsula, including one in the resort of Taba, killing 34 people. Egyptian authorities say that attack was linked to Israeli-Palestinian violence.
Associated Press reporter Hamza Hendawi in Cairo contributed to this report.
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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