Four people wounded in bomb blast near hotel close to Egypt’s pyramids

Two hotel security guards and two police were injured by a bomb which exploded outside one of the main luxury tourist hotels near the Pyramids in Cairo Friday.

The security guards found the bomb in the approach area in front of the Meridien Hotel when they did morning checks at around 6am.

They called in the police who created a cordon around the area. However, attempts to make the device safe went wrong.

“The police made a cordon around the area and the explosives experts exploded it by turning hoses on it,” a member of staff at the hotel said.

“No tourists were hurt. The explosion caused minor damage to the front windows of the hotel.”

One of the injured policemen was said to be in a “critical” condition.

The incident will be a concern to the country’s tourist industry, which has been badly hit by the unrest which has followed the protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

Tourist areas have been unaffected for the most part, but there have been a number of incidents in both the Pyramids area at Giza on the outskirts of Cairo and around the beach resorts area of the Sinai.

In June, two policemen were shot and killed not far from the Pyramids.

In north Sinai, the army are fighting an increasingly vicious war with jihadists who have declared loyalty to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

A police officer was killed and three others injured yesterday when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb near the north Sinai town of El-Arish.

The international resorts are in a specially protected zone on the south side of the peninsula.

Source: The Telegraph