Egypt Downplays Tourist Bombing

Egyptian authorities said Friday the bomber who attacked Cairo's main tourist bazaar was working alone, amid concerns the blast, which killed three people including French and American tourists, could mark a revival of Islamic militant attacks that devastated Egypt's economy in the 1990s.

Bloodstains remained Friday on a street of jewelry and souvenir shops a day after the explosion. Still, several busloads of tourists arrived at the bazaar Friday, and scores of tourists wondered freely in the area's maze of small alleys, shopping and sipping black tea, Turkish coffee or smoking a waterpipe in its cafes.

Security was heavy around the Khan al-Khalili bazaar Friday, with policemen searching bags and erecting barricades on roads leading to the area in the heart of medieval Cairo. Security in the capital as a whole, home to at least 15 million people, has been significantly stepped up, especially around Western embassies and neighborhoods with large foreign communities.

Eighteen people were wounded in the blast, including Egyptians, Americans and French. An American man in his 20s and a French woman were killed. Investigators were running DNA tests on the severely mutilated third body, which authorities say is likely that of the bomber.

A previously unknown group, al-Ezz Islamic Brigades, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on the Internet, saying it was a message to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Islamic militancy still exists in the country.

The authenticity of the claim could not be independently verified.

Egyptian officials sought to limit possible damage to Egypt's vital tourism industry, stressing that there was no evidence so far the bomber was part of a wider group.

"Initial evidence is that it was an individual act. The way in which the explosive was prepared was very primitive. Still, we will await the results of the investigation," Prime Minister Ahmed Nazief told reporters after visiting victims at hospital.

Tourism Minister Ahmed El Maghraby said it was unlikely that the blast was a prelude to a concerted terror campaign, adding: "So far, we have had no requests from tourists to leave early from Egypt."

Sheik Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, the head of Al-Azhar, one of the oldest and most prominent Muslim scholarly institutions, said the bombing could "only be carried out by someone who lost his mind."

Tourism is Egypt's largest earner of foreign currency, and the country has rebuilt the industry after it was devastated in the 1990s by attacks on foreigners by Islamic militants seeking to overthrow Mubarak's regime.

The last major burst of violence in that militant campaign was in 1997, when gunmen attacked a bus of German tourists in Cairo, killing 11, and then massacred tourists at a pharaonic temple in the southern city of Luxor in a shooting that left 64 dead.

But in October last year, 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.

There have been other, far smaller individual incidents. Last month, an Egyptian man said to be unemployed and depressed stabbed a Hungarian couple, slightly wounding them, after they kissed while pausing for a photograph at a revered mosque not far from the site of Thursday's blast.

On Friday, police sealed off a 400-yard stretch of road where the blast took place as investigators interviewed shop owners and forensic experts picked nails apparently from the bomb from the ground amid the shattered glass.

In Khan al-Khalili, shopowners said it was too early to gauge the impact from Thursday's blast.

"I had tourists in the shop just 20 minutes ago," said Imad Ahmed, who owns a store selling Arab robes and colorful headwear only a few dozen meters (yards) away from the site of the blast on Gohar al-Qaid street.

"But the effect on business will only be known in two or three days," Ahmed said Friday from behind the shop's wooden counter.

Amin al-Laban, a 51-year-old spice store owner on the street, said his 22-year-old son, Mohammed, was injured in the massive explosion.

"The blast was so big that I thought that the building above my shop collapsed, when I came out to check on Mohammed, I could not see anything from the black dust," the elder al-Laban said. "Business will die. May God have mercy on us," he said.