A bomb exploded on Sunday in a crowded Cairo market frequented by tourists, killing a 17-year-old French woman from Levallois-Perret. As many as 22 other people, most of them tourists, were wounded.

The blast occurred at the Khan al-Khalili market close to the historic Hussein mosque in a medieval part of the Egyptian capital. A second bomb was discovered by police after the explosion and was safely detonated.

Twenty-two people were injured in the blast — a German tourist, fifteen French nationals, three Saudis and three Egyptians.

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 witnesses said one of the bombs appeared to have been thrown from a passing motorbike, while others said the devices were lobbed from a nearby rooftop.

Tourism is the life-blood of the Egyptian economy, and was hit hard last September when gunmen in the far south of the country kidnapped a group of 10 foreigners, mostly Germans and Italians, on tour of a remote desert region. The tourists were eventually freed in a raid by Egyptian special forces backed by German and Italian commandos.

Extreme Islamist groups have in the past deliberately targeted the lucrative trade in tourists lured to Egypt by its ancient monuments and medieval mosques.

They have mostly focused on Egypt’s popular Red Sea resorts, carrying out a spate of lethal bomb attacks on hotels between 2004 and 2006. The deadliest attack on foreign visitors was however witnessed in 1997 in Luxor, an ancient Egyptian city south of the capital, in which 68 people were killed. It was claimed by the extremist Muslim group Jammaa Islamiyya.

To safeguard the tourism industry large numbers of police have been deployed in areas popular with foreign visitors, with guards riding on tour buses and guarding checkpoints across Sinai.

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