Three people are in custody over a Cairo bombing that killed a 17-year-old French girl and injured 24 other people, Egyptian police said.
The homemade bomb went off Sunday evening in Cairo's Khan al-Khalili bazaar, a maze of stalls and cafes popular with tourists. The Health Ministry said most of the injured were French tourists, although three Saudis and a German, as well as four Egyptians, were also wounded. Nineteen remain in hospital.
Police said the bomb was placed underneath a bench on a busy square, and was filled with pieces of metal and nails. They said a second bomb had been found nearby and defused.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition group, condemned the bombing.
"The Muslim Brotherhood considers that this act goes against the principles of Islam," the organization's leader Mahdi Akef said, adding that the group sought change and reform though peaceful, legal means.
A similar bombing in Cairo's historic heart in 2005 killed two tourists from France and one from the United States, and injured 18 other people, but incidents have been rare since and tourist numbers had been on the rise.
"The victim was 17-years-old and had travelled with a group of young people from Levallois,'' foreign ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier told AFP, referring to the Levallois-Perret suburb of Paris.
The families of the girl who died are expected to fly to Cairo today.
The attack struck in early evening in a street lined with cafes and restaurants in Khan al-Khalili, a 1500-year-old market that is one of the Egyptian capital's main tourist attractions, witnesses told AFP.
The teenagers were part of a group of 54 school children from Paris, aged from 13 - 17, visiting the bazaar before heading home. The dead girl, from the Paris suburb of Levallois-Perret, died in hospital. Another young man of 17 is seriously injured.
Police cordoned off the area, full of cafes and souvenir shops, and used bomb-sniffing dogs to locate a second device as worshippers were evacuated from the mosque.
Some reached Hussein hospital, a few hundred metres away, by foot. Others jumped into taxis to get to another medical facility.
The French embassy and consulate moved quickly to provide assistance to the teenagers. All of the wounded, except a 17-year-old boy, are expected to be able to fly back to Paris on MondayThey were among 54 children from France, aged between 13 and 17, visiting one of the Egyptian capital's main tourist attractions before heading home on Monday.
The night had fallen when the bomb went off at 6:30 pm just across the square from the Hussein mosque, which dates back to 1154 AD and is among Cairo's oldest places of worship.
"There was a very powerful explosion. Then screams and blood. We all started running," said Romy Janiw, 28, one of the seven adults accompanying the teenagers.
The office of French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a statement in Paris that one French national had died and seven others had been wounded.
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