Update 11 April: Associated Press Police Arrest 30 in Cairo Bombing CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian police have detained 30 people in last week's deadly bombing in a Cairo tourist bazaar, including the suspected bomber's mother, three brothers and 16 other relatives, prosecutors said. Police arrested the family members after identifying the body of the bomber, who died in the blast that killed two French tourists and an American and wounded 18 others Thursday in Cairo's Khan al-Khalili bazaar. Among those arrested was an uncle who called authorities after seeing the suspected bomber's body in a newspaper photograph. The suspect, Hassan Rafaat Ahmed Bashandi, was a student who became a religious extremist after his father's death, the Interior Ministry said. Bashandi, who was 17 or 18 years old, apparently acted alone in the attack, the ministry said in a statement. He was carrying almost 7 pounds of TNT in a leather bag filled with nails when it exploded prematurely, the ministry said. Egyptian authorities have been anxious to limit the fallout from the blast for fear it will harm the tourism industry, the No. 1 source of foreign exchange. From the outset, government officials have said the attack was likely to be the work of either one person or a small group of individuals. The sweep of arrests was similar to one carried out after October bombings in Sinai tourist resorts that killed 34 people ó the first major terror attack in Egypt since 1997. After that, police arrested thousands, including many relatives of the bombers, in the area of the Sinai town of el-Arish. Some of those relatives have since been released, but at least two brothers and another relative of several suspects remain in custody. Human rights groups say a total of about 2,400 people remain in custody, though the government refuses to release any figures. Among those detained in Thursday's explosion were Bashandi's mother, his three brothers and an uncle who provided a breakthrough in the case when he notified police that the body pictured in a newspaper resembled his nephew. Fifteen other relatives and three friends were also detained, prosecutors said. Police broke into Bashandi's apartment at 3 a.m. Sunday and detained his mother, said her landlady, Nawal Abdel-Halim. "The family did not know where Hassan was, so they were all searching for him. His mother was not told anything about it" until police detained her, Abdel-Halim said. In the tiny apartment, police found CDs containing data downloaded from the Internet on waging Islamic holy war and building bombs. At Bashandi's aunt's house, police found 43 fireworks from which the gunpowder had been removed. Bashandi, born in 1987, was studying engineering at Zagazig University, north of Cairo. The Interior Ministry said that after his father died in August, he began to exhibit extreme religious positions, such as forbidding his family to watch television. Neighbors in Shoubra el-Khaima, a low-to-middle income district in Cairo, said they could not believe Bashandi was responsible for the bombing. Mamdouh Raafat, a neighbor who knew the family for two decades, denied that Bashandi was an extremist. "Why do they call every pious person a terrorist? They (the family) only pray and read the Quran," he said. "They don't flirt with girls and they don't get involved in streets fights ... They don't even smoke." Police say DNA samples from an uncle and Bashandi's mother matched that of the corpse found in the bombing. During the 1990s, Islamic insurgents often attacked tourists in a bid to cripple the tourism industry and bring down the government. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Update 10 April: Death toll from Cairo bomb rises to four CAIRO (Reuters) - A Frenchman wounded in a bombing in a Cairo bazaar died on his way back to Paris for treatment, a French foreign ministry spokesman said on Sunday, bringing the death toll to four. A French woman, an American man and a man thought to be the bomber also died in the attack on Thursday at the lively bazaar jammed with tourists. Egyptian prosecution sources said on Sunday that they had identified the bomber from his fingerprints as a man from Qalioubia province north of Cairo and that he had three accomplices who helped him prepare the explosives. The sources said that the four people were not part of a larger organized group. Tourism Minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi also has said the bombing was the act of an individual, not a group. The French foreign ministry spokesman, who asked not to be named, said the Frenchman died while being repatriated from Cairo to Paris by plane on the night of Saturday/Sunday. Doctors in Cairo had taken the decision to send the man back to France for treatment, the spokesman said from Paris. The man's wife, who was less seriously injured in the attack, had already returned to France, a senior Egyptian official said on Friday. The French spokesman declined to name the man or release any personal details. Maghrabi quoted doctors on Friday as saying the Frenchman, who had been in a critical condition, was out of danger. The bombing, which also injured 11 Egyptians and seven other foreigners, took place in the crowded Moski area Islamic Cairo in a street full of shops selling perfumes, carpets, jewelry and souvenirs for tourists. MILITANT TRUCE It was the worst attack on tourists in the Nile valley since 1997, when militant Islamists armed with guns and swords killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians at a Pharaonic temple near the southern town of Luxor After that incident, the militant Gama'a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group), which had tried to overthrow the government by force, decided on a long-term truce. Many leading members have since abandoned their commitment to violence. A group calling itself the Islamic Pride Brigades in the Land of the Nile said on an Islamist Web site that one of its militants carried out the bombing on Thursday to protest against the "tyranny" of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's government and U.S. policies in the region. There was no way to authenticate the claim or judge whether such a group exists. Analysts said some militant Islamists in Egypt may be growing impatient with the truce at a time when regional tensions are high over U.S. policies in the Middle East. Militants say Mubarak serves U.S. interests. The bombing also coincided with a state of ferment in Egyptian politics, with frequent demonstrations against a fifth six-year term for Mubarak, who has been in power since 1981. The bombing hit Egyptian stocks hard on Sunday morning when the market reopened after the Muslim weekend, The benchmark index for Egyptian stocks fell 3.7 percent but brokers said they thought that the worst was over. "If it (the bombing) passes off as a one-off thing, then the impact will be minor, especially for the foreign investors and the institutions. As long as they are positive on the economy, this will be just a hiccup on the way," said Yasser Hassanein, a broker at Dynamic Securities.
