An explosion targeting a tourist bus injured at least 12 people near a new museum being built close to the Giza pyramids in Egypt on Sunday, two security sources said.
Most of those injured were foreign tourists, the sources said. One security source said they included South African nationals.
There were no reports of deaths. A witness, Mohamed el-Mandouh, told Reuters he heard a “very loud explosion” while sitting in traffic near the site of the blast.
Pictures posted on social media showed a bus with some of its windows blown out or shattered, and debris in the road next to a low wall with a hole in it.
It is the second incident affecting tourists in Egypt in six months.
In December, three Vietnamese tourists and an Egyptian guide were killed and at least 10 others injured when a roadside bomb hit their tour bus less than 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Giza pyramids.
Those hurt on Sunday suffered injuries of medium to minor gravity, said a local security source.
Tourism is a mainstay of Egypt’s economy with hotel workers, tourist guides, taxi drivers and stallholders in the souks and bazaars depending on it for their living.
The industry has been trying to recover since a sharp drop in visitor numbers after the turmoil of the Arab Spring in 2011 and the bombing of a Russian passenger jet in 2015 when 224 people were killed.
Since Al-Sisi launched a military coup in 2013 against the country’s first democratically elected President Mohamed Morsi, Egypt has battled militants for years in the Sinai Peninsula in an insurgency that has occasionally spilled over to the mainland, hitting minority Christians or tourists.
The road near the Grand Egyptian Museum is often popular with tour buses travelling to and from the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The museum is expected to open fully to the public in 2020 and it will be the ‘largest archaeological museum in the world’, housing many Tutankhamun artefacts.
