Egypt says thwarts suicide attack on foreign embassy

Egyptian security forces thwarted an al-Qaeda-linked group’s plan to carry out a suicide attack on a foreign embassy and captured several militants, the Interior Minister said yesterday.

Mohamed Ibrahim, speaking in a televised news conference, declined to say which embassy had been targeted. He named three suspected members of the cell now under arrest.

“The Interior Ministry was able to direct a qualitative blow to a terrorist cell that was planning suicide operations against vital, important and foreign facilities in the country,” he said.

One of the captured militants had travelled to Pakistan and Iran to receive training, and was a member of al-Qaeda in Algeria, Ibrahim said. An Algerian al-Qaeda leader claimed responsibility for a January siege of an Algerian gas plant in which 37 foreign hostages were killed.

Security in Egypt has deteriorated since a 2011 uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, whose three-decade rule was marked by fierce crackdowns on militant Islamists.

Armed Islamist groups have expanded into the Sinai Peninsula in the wake of the revolt, but militancy has been less apparent in the Nile Delta, where the overwhelming majority of the population is concentrated.