The criminal investigation apparatus of the Interior Ministry was able to determine the identity of the suicide bomber who blew himself up at St Mark’s cathedral in Alexandria on Palm Sunday, 9 April 2017. He was identified as Mahmoud H. M, born 28 September 1986 in the southern province of Qena, and had worked with an oil company in Suez. The Interior Ministry issued a statement which said the suicide bomber had belonged to a fundamentalist Islamic terrorist cell that originated in Qena, and is managed by Amr S. E, born in 1985, who is a labourer and the suicide bomber’s brother in law, and is wanted by the police in connection with other terrorist crimes. That same cell, the statement said, was responsible for the suicide bombing at al-Boutrossiya church in Cairo last December, which claimed 29 lives.
The police statement related a string of recent confrontations with members of the terrorist cell in which a number of policemen and terrorists lost their lives. The most recent of these confrontations took place on Monday 10 April in Assiut, some 350km south of Cairo, during which seven terrorists were killed and a cache of arms and ammunition found.
The Interior Ministry said it was in the process of determining the identity of the suicide bomber who blew himself also on Palm Sunday at the Tanta church of St George. Both the Palm Sunday bombings claimed over 45 lives and injured almost 100 individuals.
The statement listed information on 19 members of the terrorist cell, and promised a bounty of EGP100,000 for anyone who offers information that would help the police catch them.