Egypt: Suicide blast in Cairo tourist area kills three policemen

A policeman has died of his wounds sustained in an explosion that took place in Cairo, raising the death toll in the incident to three, police said on Tuesday.

The blast took place late on Monday as security forces were chasing a man identified as the person who planted another explosive device in front of a mosque on Friday near the Egyptian capital, which specialists managed to defuse.

A video circulating on local media showed the moment Monday’s blast. The man with the explosives, identified by authorities as 37-year-old Hassan Al-Hassan Abdullah, was riding a bicycle in a narrow alleyway as security forces chased after him near Cairo’s historic centre.

He blew up the device in al-Darb al-Ahmar neighbourhood, near the Old Cairo tourist area and al-Azhar mosque, the moment was stopped, killing himself and two policemen as well as injuring three other officers, according to Egypt’s interior ministry.

Police said Abdullah was a foreign national, without revealing more details.

They said they found a time bomb upon searching his apartment. The building was temporarily evacuated until the bomb was defused.

Egypt has seen a spate of attacks mainly against security forces and the country’s Coptic Christian minority since the army’s 2013 overthrow of former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.

Groups including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) have usually claimed these attacks as the country’s army and police try to suppress armed groups in the Sinai peninsula.

Last month, a policeman was killed as he was trying to defuse an explosive device near a church in a residential Cairo district.

In December, three Vietnamese tourists and their Egyptian guide were killed after a roadside bomb struck a tourist bus near the Pyramids of Giza, south of Cairo.

It was the first deadly attack against foreign tourists in Egypt in more than a year and comes as the tourism sector, a vital source of foreign currency revenue, recovers from a sharp drop in visitor numbers since a 2011 uprising that toppled former leader Hosni Mubarak.

SOURCE:
Al Jazeera and news agencies