CAIRO: Egyptian police have detained three suspects who were present at the scene of the Al-Hussein blast Sunday night which killed a 17-year-old French girl and wounded 25 others.
The bomb went off in the tourist district of Al-Hussein, near the popular Khan Al Khalili market in the heart of Cairo.
Amongst the wounded are 17 French students, four Egyptians, three Saudis and a German woman.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the suspects who are in custody were detained at the scene of the blast in the square in front of Al-Hussein Mosque.
An Interior Ministry spokesman told Daily News Egypt that the detained suspects had not been placed under arrest, but were taken in for questioning as part of the investigations in the attacks.
After the blast at around 7 pm on Sunday, security forces created a cordon around the site, and people within the perimeter were kept inside as investigations were underway.
There was the sound of another explosion at 8:10 pm. Reports indicate that it was a controlled explosion, but that did not prevent bystanders from running in panic.
I was sitting near my incense cart on the other side of the square. The urn that holds the incense fell off the cart from the explosion. There was fire in the sky and my cart shook, Zakaria, an incense seller in the square, told Daily News Egypt.
Security forces rained on the area and instituted a total lockdown of the square. The wounded were being taken to Al Hussein University hospital further up the road, which was also surrounded by central security forces. They were later transferred to Nasser Institute, another public hospital.
Ambulances were shuttling between the site of the blast and the hospital to transport the wounded. The security cordon spread about 50 meters from the blast site in all directions.
Further up the street from the site of the blast, tourists still milled about in cafes, apparently nonplussed by the chaos down the road.
It has not yet been confirmed how the bomb was set off, with one theory positing that the bomb was placed in a bag that was left under one of the stone benches around the square.
According to another theory, the bomb was allegedly thrown from the window of Al- Hussein hotel which also overlooks the square.
Witnesses did state that the benches on that side of the square had been ripped apart from the impact of the blast. There were unconfirmed reports that the attack was perpetrated by two people wearing a face-veil (niqab) along with another man.
The last attack in the area was on April 7, 2005 when a suicide bomber set off an explosive device in Moski, also near the Khan Al Khalili bazaar – a street market popular with tourists and locals alike – and the Al Hussein Mosque.
Three foreign tourists (two from France and one from the United States) were killed, and 11 Egyptians and seven other tourists were injured.
Later in the same month, another suicide bomber wounded seven in an attack near the Egyptian Museum.
