Assaults Egypt

Sixteen-year-old Marwa Mohammed Kamal, a good student with a bright future, had just stepped from her apartment in a working-class neighborhood when she saw the man whom she barely knew but with whom she had recently broken off an arranged marriage. He raced toward the tall, striking young woman, flinging a foul-smelling liquid on her face, arm and back. She collapsed in searing agony--the victim of what is becoming an increasingly common attack here. She had been burned with sulfuric acid.

A man armed with a knife slashed at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and lightly grazed his arm Monday before being shot to death by presidential bodyguards in the Suez Canal city of Port Said, the government said. The 71-year-old Mubarak, who faces a plebiscite later this month in which he is expected to be granted a fourth six-year term, had been in his limousine waving to well-wishers when the attack came shortly after noon.

Armed men shouting "God is greater!" firebombed and shot into a crowded tour bus in the heart of this city Thursday, setting off a conflagration and gun battle that killed nine German tourists and their Egyptian driver. It was the worst assault on tourists in Cairo in 17 months.

Intrepid tourists with fanny packs, water bottles and sun hats were back Tuesday at the Temple of Hatshepsut, their tour leaders guiding them past flecks of congealed blood on the hieroglyphics and around other grisly reminders of the terror that reigned here 24 hours earlier.

Intrepid tourists with fanny packs, water bottles and sun hats were back Tuesday at the Temple of Hatshepsut, their tour leaders guiding them past flecks of congealed blood on the hieroglyphics and around other grisly reminders of the terror that reigned here 24 hours earlier.

Egyptian police named five men suspected of killing 10 Coptic Christians at a church in southern Egypt and asked the public Saturday for information on their whereabouts. State television showed photographs of the men and described them as terrorists--the usual term used for Muslim militants fighting to overthrow the government and turn Egypt into a strict Islamic state.

Sudan recalled three of its diplomats who were assaulted outside their homes in Cairo and ordered the families of its embassy staff to leave Egypt. The move followed beatings of Egyptian and Sudanese diplomats in both Cairo and Khartoum over the weekend. Relations between the Arab neighbors have worsened since Egypt accused Sudan of plotting a June 26 assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak.

Muslim militants attacked a luxury-train sleeping car in central Egypt early Saturday, wounding four people and striking a new blow at the country's tourist industry. The militant group Gamaa al Islamiya, or Islamic Group, said it carried out the attack as "swift retribution" for the recent sentencing to death of an army officer and two conscripts charged with mining an airstrip close to the Libyan border.

In a surge of bloody attacks by Islamic extremists on Egypt's police forces and the Coptic Christian minority, 13 people have been killed this week, 12 of them Copts. The most recent attack, in Egypt's southern Asyut province on Monday, was part of a 2-month-old dispute over a house. Police have rounded up scores of known extremists but said only three are prime suspects. The attacks are rattling the country's stability and security.

Fundamentalist Muslim students in Egypt attacked a group of Boy and Girl Scouts with knives, stones and bicycle chains, then opened fire on security forces as they came to the youths' aid, authorities said. About 50 students were arrested after the incident, officials said. The trouble began during a meeting and parade of the Rovers, a group roughly equivalent to the Explorers in the American Boy Scout program, at a stadium in Assyut, Egypt.

Armed men shouting "God is greater!" firebombed and shot into a crowded tour bus in the heart of this city Thursday, setting off a conflagration and gun battle that killed nine German tourists and their Egyptian driver. It was the worst assault on tourists in Cairo in 17 months.

Sixteen-year-old Marwa Mohammed Kamal, a good student with a bright future, had just stepped from her apartment in a working-class neighborhood when she saw the man whom she barely knew but with whom she had recently broken off an arranged marriage. He raced toward the tall, striking young woman, flinging a foul-smelling liquid on her face, arm and back. She collapsed in searing agony--the victim of what is becoming an increasingly common attack here. She had been burned with sulfuric acid.

Egyptian police named five men suspected of killing 10 Coptic Christians at a church in southern Egypt and asked the public Saturday for information on their whereabouts. State television showed photographs of the men and described them as terrorists--the usual term used for Muslim militants fighting to overthrow the government and turn Egypt into a strict Islamic state.

The Rev. Eleya Komoss was seated in the confession room when the low murmurs inside the Mar Girgis Church where a weekly meeting of young Coptic Christians was in progress were replaced by the jarring staccato of machine-gun fire. "I opened the door and found everyone running about," the Coptic priest recounted Friday. "There were two girls who had been shot in the back. I pulled them inside. Another man shot in the back was calling out to me, 'Help me, Father,' so I pulled him inside too.

In the worst attack on foreigners in four years of Islamic revolt in Egypt, suspected Muslim extremists screaming "God is great!" opened fire Thursday on a crowd of elderly Greek religious pilgrims at a hotel outside Cairo. Eighteen of the pilgrims were killed by the automatic-weapons fire, and 16 others and an Egyptian taxi driver were wounded in the early morning attack at the Europa Hotel, less than a mile from the Great Pyramids, the government said. The killers escaped.

Rival forces clashed with guns, knives and sticks Wednesday in a bloody conclusion to Egyptian parliamentary elections that were boycotted by leading Islamic candidates to protest what they called an attempt to bar them from political life. At least 15 people were killed and dozens wounded during the runoff vote for 306 seats in the People's Assembly, or parliament, police said. More than 100 people were arrested. In the worst fight, six people were killed in the southern province of Qena.

A military court convicted a group of Muslim extremists of attacking foreign tourists and trying to overthrow the government and sentenced seven of them to hang. In the first trial of extremists charged in recent attacks on tourists, 25 men were given prison terms of up to 25 years, while 17 were acquitted. Six of the death sentences were for a Nov. 12 attack on a tour bus in southern Egypt. The extremists have targeted tourists, a main source of foreign currency.

The passengers of the luxury river cruiser called the Nile Elite were just sitting down to lunch when a series of loud cracks rang out from the west bank of the Nile. Many ran to windows, eager to see what sounded like a traditional celebration on shore. What they saw were four men with scarves wrapped around their faces, each of them pointing automatic rifles at the ship. The passengers screamed and dived for cover. The cook and a tour guide collapsed with bullets in their legs.

Sudan recalled three of its diplomats who were assaulted outside their homes in Cairo and ordered the families of its embassy staff to leave Egypt. The move followed beatings of Egyptian and Sudanese diplomats in both Cairo and Khartoum over the weekend. Relations between the Arab neighbors have worsened since Egypt accused Sudan of plotting a June 26 assassination attempt on President Hosni Mubarak.

Egyptian police have arrested the man they believe stabbed and wounded the country's best-known novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz, security sources said today. Mahfouz, 82, had an operation on Friday after the man, apparently a Muslim militant, stabbed him in the neck outside the writer's Cairo apartment. Doctors say his condition is now good.