A roadside bomb near Alexandria, Egypt’s second-largest city, killed a bystander and injured two others yesterday, while authorities defused two more explosives at Cairo International Airport, officials said.
The latest reports are part of recent spike in small bombs being planted around Egypt. Many of the devices have been so-called flash-bang grenades, designed to sow panic, but cause minimal damage or casualties.
The larger and deadlier bombs have been targeted almost exclusively at members of the Egyptian police and army.
Photo: Reuters
There are rarely individual claims of responsibility, but Muslim militant groups have vowed to target police and military troops to avenge their crackdown on militants in the wake of the ouster of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
Yesterday’s roadside bombing was a rare incident of a civilian being killed by these rudimentary explosives.
Officials said the bomb was targeting a police patrol driving in the beachfront town of Agamy, on the western outskirts of Alexandria. The bomb went off, apparently detonated remotely, as the vehicles moved — injuring a street vendor, his son and a bystander.
The bystander later died of his wounds, the officials said.
In Cairo, officials said a bomb was planted in the Cairo International Airport arrival hall of the terminal hosting EgyptAir. Another was planted near a police patrol location in the airport’s parking lot. Both were defused.
The officials said the bombs appeared to be controlled remotely by mobile phone.
In another incident, a flash-bang grenade planted inside an electrical box in an open-air arcade in downtown Cairo exploded, panicking passers-by, but causing no injuries.
In other developments, al-Jazeera journalist Mohamed Fahmy has renounced his Egyptian citizenship in a bid to follow his Australian colleague Peter Greste in being released from a Cairo jail, his family said yesterday.
Fahmy’s surrender of his Egyptian passport is a necessary step for him to be freed and deported as a foreign national under a decree issued by Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in November last year. He also has Canadian citizenship.
The news came after Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird said that Fahmy’s release was “imminent” following the freeing of Greste on Sunday.
Fahmy and Greste were arrested in December 2013 with Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed, and later sentenced to up to 10 years in prison on charges of aiding the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
Additional reporting by AFP
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