1 dead, 21 hurt in Cairo bombing

CAIRO, Egypt - A bomb exploded yesterday in a bazaar near the historic Hussein mosque in Cairo, killing a French woman, wounding 21 other people, and raising fears that Islamic militants may be targeting Egypt's tourist industry after several years of relative quiet.

The blast was small, but it reverberated through the tight alleys of the centuries-old Khan El-Khalili bazaar and sent shopkeepers, coffee-shop waiters, worshipers, and tourists scrambling for cover.

Egyptian state-owned TV reported that a French tourist had been killed and the other victims, mostly foreigners, injured when two masked women tossed a bomb from the roof of a motel just after dusk.

But there were confusion, panic, and conflicting reports. Some media quoted police and security forces as saying four people had been killed by a bomb that was either thrown from a motorcycle or hidden under a bench. Other reports said police had discovered and safely detonated a second explosive device.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry did not immediately release a statement.

The blast ripped through the square as worshipers filed into the mosque, and at least two tour buses were parked outside. No one claimed responsibility for the blast, and it was not clear if tourists had been targeted.

"I was praying in the Hussein mosque, and I heard an explosion, and we went out and I saw two injured children and a tourist with his legs cut off," said a man whom police escorted away before he could give his name.

Islamic extremists in recent weeks have criticized the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak for not providing aid and assistance to Palestinians during the Israeli incursion into the Gaza Strip. Egypt's decision to keep its border with Gaza largely closed during the 22 days of fighting intensified the divide in the Arab world between the region's hard-line political leaders and U.S. allies, such as Egypt, that oppose control of the Palestinian enclave by the militant group Hamas.

Hamas has close ideological ties to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group and Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, which the Mubarak government says is intent on creating an Islamic state in this nation of 83 million people. The Brotherhood, which has renounced violence inside Egypt, controls 20 percent of parliament, but hundreds of its members have been arrested in recent years.

"This bombing belongs to the phenomenon of discontinuous and random terror that occurs on a limited scale," said Mohamed Abdel Salam, an Egyptian security expert. "It is usually perpetrated by a group of individuals who do not belong to any organization, use primitive tools, and hit only available targets."

He added: "Definitely, this bombing has to do with the war on Gaza and the animosity aroused against Egypt in the region."

Terrorist plots and bombings have shaken Egypt in the last decade, including a 1997 militant attack that killed 63 people, many of them tourists in Luxor. That attack temporarily crippled the country's tourist industry and was followed by two other well-orchestrated assaults, including the 2005 bombings in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh that killed more than 60 people. Also that year, a bomb near the Hussein mosque in Cairo killed three people, including two French men and an American.