Car explosion was terror attack gone wrong: Egypt

The Egyptian government said Islamist militants were behind a blast that killed at least 20 people near a hospital in central Cairo, the latest bloodshed in the North African nation.

کد خبر: ۹۱۶۳۰۲

تاریخ: ۱۵ مرداد ۱۳۹۸ - ۰۹:۲۷

Militants were transporting an explosives-laden vehicle for an attack elsewhere when it collided with other cars and detonated outside a cancer hospital late on Sunday local time, the Interior Ministry said. Forty-seven other people were injured in the blast.

The ministry did not say what the intended target was. The car had been stolen months earlier in the Nile Delta, it said.

President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi described it as a "cowardly terrorist incident," and said the Egyptian state was committed to "confront and uproot brutal terrorism."

The Interior Ministry said the Hasm movement was responsible, a group that's carried out previous attacks and is linked to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood.

The attack is the deadliest in Cairo since a bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 30 people during Sunday Mass in December 2016. That attack was claimed by Egypt's affiliate of the Islamic State group.

In the last significant attack in greater Cairo in May, at least 16 people were wounded in a roadside bombing targeting a tour bus near the Giza pyramids.

Egypt is waging a years-long campaign against militant groups, including those affiliated with Islamic State. While much of the violence has been in North Sinai, extremists have also carried out attacks far beyond the peninsula.