Cairo – Two veiled women in their 20s opened fire at a tour bus in a historic district of the Egyptian capital Saturday, then killed themselves, the Interior Ministry said.
Two other people were wounded.
Two hours earlier, a man suspected in a tourist bazaar bombing three weeks ago – the brother and fiancé of the women who shot up the bus – leapt from an overpass during a police chase and set off a bomb he was carrying. He died, and seven people, including four foreigners, were wounded in the explosion.
After a string of brazen terrorist attacks during the 1990s, Egypt experienced a relative lull in such violence until October, when near simultaneous bomb blasts at two Sinai resorts killed 34 people.
Then, a suicide bomber targeted foreigners near the crowded Cairo tourist bazaar April 7, killing three people and wounding 18.
Ehab Yousri Yassin was being sought in connection with that attack when he set off the Saturday blast near a five-star hotel frequented by foreigners and behind the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo.
A group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades claimed responsibility for the twin attacks in a statement posted on a Web forum used by Islamists.
It said the attacks were in revenge for the deaths of those who carried out the Sinai bombings last year and for the subsequent arrests of thousands of people.
The claim’s authenticity could not be verified.
The group – whose name refers to a Palestinian militant who worked alongside Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan and died there in 1989 – was one of several that claimed responsibility for the Sinai attacks at the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan.
In the Saturday bus shooting, the Interior Ministry identified the two female Muslim attackers as Yassin’s sister, Negat, and his fiancée, Iman Ibrahim Khamis.
The two women followed the bus in their car, then stopped their vehicle and opened fire, pumping three bullets into the back window before turning their weapons on themselves, the ministry said. One died immediately, and the other died at a hospital.
Two other Egyptians were wounded in the shooting. Witnesses said a police patrol returned fire against the women.
The shooting took place in a part of old Cairo rich with historic mosques and cemeteries.
At the scene of the downtown explosion, officials speculated that Yassin might have been heading for a nearby bus depot when he was spotted by police.
“The explosion was caused by a very primitive bomb full of nails. Most of the injuries were superficial, caused by the destruction of the nails,” Health Minister Mohammed Awad Tag Eddin said.
