REPORT: Egypt Interior Minister survives assassination attempt

     
Egypt's interior minister survived an assassination attempt  unscathed on Thursday when a car bomb blew up next to his convoy and gunmen strafed his vehicle, prompting him to warn that a wave of terrorism by opponents of the military-installed government was just beginning.

The minister, Mohamed Ibrahim, has been involved in overseeing a violent crackdown on supporters of Mohamed Morsi, the elected Islamist president who was overthrown on July 3 by the army following mass protests against his rule.

No organization immediately claimed responsibility for the first attempt to kill an Egyptian minister since the 1990s, but it appeared to bear the hallmarks of an Islamist attack.

"It is likely that it was a suicide explosion as a result of a high explosive device," an Interior Ministry statement said.

Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood - accused by the government of terrorism and inciting violence - condemned it.

But the sophisticated attack, possibly involving a suicide bomber with a massive bomb, as well as a follow-up attack with firearms, showed the risk that Egypt's crisis could spawn a wave of Islamist attacks like those of the 1980s and 1990s.

Staged in broad daylight, it was by far the most audacious act of militancy since Morsi's overthrow, although radicals have also stepped up an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Video footage emerged on Thursday showing two militants firing rocket-propelled grenades at a container ship as it passed through the Suez Canal in the eastern Sinai on Saturday.

Online calls from Islamists for an even more violent response have intensified since Aug. 14, when the security forces killed hundreds of Morsi's supporters while breaking up their protest camps in Cairo.

"What happened today is not the end but the beginning,"  Ibrahim said.

The Interior Ministry said the blast damage indicated that a 50-kg (110-pound) bomb had been used.


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REUTERS