Three killed as Cairo bomber targets tourists

CAIRO - A suicide bomber struck at foreign tourists near Egypt's most famous museum while his veiled sister and his girlfriend opened fire at a tourist bus in attacks that left all three dead, officials said.

The bombing injured seven people including four foreigners near the Egyptian museum, a key tourist attraction for its pharaonic treasures.

The casualties were three Egyptians, an Israeli couple aged 60 and 55, an Italian man aged 26 and a Swedish man aged 28, the Interior Ministry said.

In the bus attack in south Cairo, the first in living memory by women in Egypt, the two veiled women fired three shots at the coach's back window, the Interior Ministry said. No one in the bus was hit but shattered glass lay on the road.

Two bombings targeting tourists in the last seven months have had little effect on Egypt's tourism industry, which brought in 3.5 billion pounds in 2004, a record year with more than eight million tourists. But economists say a string of attacks in close succession could hit Egypt hard.

Health Minister Mohamed Awad Tag el-Din said the injured had superficial wounds caused by nails in the bomb. Most were in good condition, except for the Swede, whose wounds were "moderate". Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif told reporters that one of them might need to have an operation.

The two veiled woman, identified by the Interior Ministry as the bomber's sister Negat Yousri and his girlfriend Iman Ibrahim Khamees, attacked on the Salah Salem highway, one of the main arteries through the south of the city.

The ministry said Negat then shot and wounded her companion and committed suicide. Khamees died in hospital of her wounds.

It said the man who blew himself up was Ihab Yousri Yassin, a fugitive member of the group which planned an April 7 bombing which killed three tourists in a Cairo bazaar.

He jumped from a bridge into the square below where he detonated the bomb, it said. "They found his papers, and the identity card of the perpetrator of the Azhar (bazaar) incident," the ministry said in a statement.

Police have arrested in the last few hours the two other fugitive members of the group, named as Ashraf Said Youssef and Gamal Ahmed Abdel-Aal, the ministry added.

Other security sources said someone had thrown a bomb from a bridge which passes behind the museum.

Two groups -- the Mujahideen of Egypt and the Martyr Abdullah Azzam Brigades -- said on an Islamist website that their people carried out the attacks. It was not possible to verify their authenticity and some of the details of their claims did not appear to match witness accounts.

- REUTERS