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Japanese Woman Stabbed Near Egyptian Pyramids
CAIRO, March 17 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A Japanese woman who lives in Egypt was stabbed and slightly injured by an Egyptian in a botched robbery attempt near the pyramids at Giza outside Cairo Saturday, the police said.
Her assailant, a 28-year-old barber from Egypt's Mediterranean city of Alexandria, was shot and seriously wounded by police before being taken into custody.
The woman, who was visiting the pyramids with her British husband and family members, was stabbed once in the stomach and once in the back.
She was taken to the nearby Pyramids Hospital, where her condition was listed as "stable."
Sherin Fuad, deputy manager of the Pyramids Hospital, said her "injuries are just superficial, with wounds in the abdomen and in the back of the chest wall on the left side."
"They are not penetrating wounds, and she will get plastic surgery in the operating room soon," he added.
Hospital officials later said the woman had been moved to a hospital in the Maadi suburb, where the couple lives.
The woman's name was not immediately clear, but Fuad said she was 37 years old and her husband an employee of the BP Amoco oil company in Cairo, with the two having lived in Egypt for the past six months.
The assailant, Mohamed Shehata, had attempted to rob her at knifepoint near Chephren, the middle of the three Giza pyramids, the ministry statement said.
As he fled, he set off several firecrackers and stabbed and slightly wounded a police officer that was pursuing him. Witnesses said the attack caused panic among tourists and large groups of Egyptian schoolchildren.
He was fired on by police, who wounded him in the shoulder, face and leg, according to medical officials. He was taken to the same hospital as his victim, where he was first listed as in a coma. But he later woke up and was classified as in stable condition.
Fuad said Shehata had apparently tried to rob a camera from the woman.
After the incident, security forces immediately surrounded around the plateau on which the pyramids rest and evacuated visitors, but tourists were later allowed to return. Police said they had detained a second Egyptian at the scene and were interrogating him.
The attack was the second security incident in Egypt involving foreigners in less than a week. Earlier in the week, four Germans were abducted by a distraught Egyptian tour guide who was refused a visa to visit his kidnapped children in Germany. The four tourists were eventually released unharmed and the guide was arrested.
By the pyramids, tourists expressed alarm over the stabbing.
"This won't be good for Egypt's publicity," said an anonymous middle-aged tourist from the United States who was on vacation with his wife.
Tourism is a key source of hard currency for Egypt, which has only just begun to recover from a 1997 attack outside a temple at Luxor that left 58 foreigners dead.
In 1999, nearly 4.5 million visitors poured $4 billion into the nation's economy, making tourism the second largest source of hard currency after remittances sent home by expatriate Egyptians working overseas in the Gulf countries and the West.
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