So says an Egyptian security chief; apparently Egyptian al-Qaeda leader Ayman Zawahiri does not count. “Egypt arrests Qaeda cell over deadly Cairo bombing,” by Samer al-Atrush for AFP, May 23:
CAIRO (AFP) “” Egypt said on Saturday that police have arrested seven members of an alleged Al-Qaeda-affiliated cell over a Cairo bazaar bombing three months ago that killed a teenaged French tourist.
The interior ministry said those arrested over the February attack were a French woman of Albanian origin, a British man of Egyptian descent, two Palestinians, a Belgian man of Tunisian descent and two Egyptians.
“(Police) were able, through information received and surveillance, to identify a group, some of them Egyptians and others foreigners, affiliated with Al-Qaeda… and seven of them were arrested,” it said in a statement.
An Egyptian minister had on Monday announced the arrest of suspects over the February 22 attack in the famed Khan al-Khalili bazaar, but gave no details on the number detained.
A French girl was killed and 24 people, mostly tourists, were injured in the bombing, the first deadly attack on tourists in Egypt since 2006.
The ministry said members of the cell, which called itself the Islamic Army of Palestine and was led by two Egyptians living abroad, were found in possession of weapons and explosives.[…]
Egypt saw a spate of deadly bombings, which killed dozens of tourists and Egyptians, in Sinai resorts on the Red Sea between 2004 and 2006 which the authorities blamed on militants loyal to Al-Qaeda.
On May 10, a small bomb hidden in a car detonated outside a Cairo church, without causing casualties. A security official told AFP that it was similar to the one used in the Khan el-Khalili attack, but police were not linking the two.
A security official told AFP that police believed the Khan el-Khalili attack was the first in Egypt with organisational links to Al-Qaeda.
“This is a big issue, it’s the first time we can say Al-Qaeda is in Egypt,” he said…