Suicide bomber attacks Egypt's Luxor temple tourist site
Number of casualties at Karnak temple unclear after latest suicide bombing in Egypt to target a site popular with foreign and domestic tourists
A bomb exploded outside Egypt’s ancient Luxor temple of Karnak on Wednesday, wounding bystanders and raising the spectre of future attacks on the country’s fragile tourism industry.
The interior ministry said no tourists were wounded in the blast, but claimed that two gunmen were killed in a firefight outside the sprawling, Nile-side temple and said a third attacker was being treated for his injuries.
But the governor of Luxor, Mohamed Badr, gave a slightly different version of events, saying the blast occurred after police accidentally shot one of the gunmen on his suicide belt.
The attack outside one of its most famous heritage sites underscored the fragility of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s promise to restore economic stability and security to a country that has yet to recover from the turmoil which followed its 2011 uprising.
Tourism is the lifeblood of Luxor and one of the Egyptian government’s main sources of revenue.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attempted attack, the interior ministry’s early version of events suggested the attackers had attempted a complex operation bearing the hallmarks of Egypt's Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) loyalists, Sinai Province.
The jihadist group has been locked in battle with the army in a region running along the border with Israel and Gaza. It has claimed responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of security personnel in the area and beheaded several local residents on charges of spying.
In February 2014, the militants bombed a tourist bus in the nearby resort town of Taba, killing four people.
The group has failed to mount successful attacks on the Egyptian mainland over the past year, but observers said the group pursued a significant escalation in its attacking strategy on Tuesday night, hitting an air base housing an international peacekeeping force in North Sinai.
Police near the scene of the suicide attack in Luxor, Egypt (Reuters)
Wednesday’s attack was the second this month by suspected Islamist militants at or near a major tourist attraction. On June 3, gunmen on a speeding motorcycle opened fire outside the famed Giza Pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo, killing two police officers.
“Even if tourists themselves aren’t the targets, as they seemed not to be last week near the pyramids, such events are likely to worry the international community at a time that tourists are starting to return to places like Cairo and Luxor,” said Zack Gold, Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.
Egypt’s antiquities minister issued orders on Wednesday to intensify security at antiquities sites across the country in coordination with the interior ministry.
More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, but footfall figures dived the following year after a mass uprising unseated longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak. In 2013, the figure shrank to just 9.5 million, after the authorities led a military coup, four highly publicised massacres, and implemented a three month-long nighttime curfew.
The attack was the first to target world-famous attractions in Luxor since November 1997, when Islamic militants opened fire on tourists at the city's 3,400-year-old Hatshepsut Temple on the west bank of the Nile, killing 58.
In 2014, Egypt’s prime minister issued a warning to the tourism industry after a terror group claimed a suicide bombing on a bus which killed three South Koreans and threatened to stage more attacks.
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