Egypt police claim to foil suicide attack at Luxor

Police said two attackers were killed and another wounded on Wednesday close to the Karnak temple in Luxor, a popular tourist destination close to Egypt's famed Valley of the Kings.

Luxor police said officers opened fire on three men after they refused to undergo security screening at a checkpoint near the site.

Police said officers shot two men as they withdrew weapons concealed in their bags, killing one and seriously wounding another. A third assailant managed to detonate a bomb he was carrying and died in the explosion.

"Security forces in Luxor foiled a terrorist operation... Two terrorists were killed and a third was wounded," the police said in a statement.

Conflicting reports

Doubts regarding the official account of the incident have increased as the narrative changed through the day.

Security sources first said that three gunmen tried to storm the Karnak temple with a car bomb before officers killed two of them, while the third detonated a suicide vest.

However, the same sources said earlier that the incident was caused by the detonation of a car bomb, while the governor of Luxor, Mohammed Sayed Badr, told the AP news agency that the attack was "an attempt to break into the temple of Karnak".

The attack also raises questions over the motivations of those behind the explosion and its intended goal or message, as no armed group or party has yet claimed responsibility.

Usually, after an attack of this nature, armed groups queue up to claim it as their own and use it to spin their own agendas.

Some observers speculate that the attack may have been orchestrated in order to accelerate a cabinet change that President Sisi has repeatedly postponed.

Others raise the possibility that loyalists of former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly carried out the operation to prove the failure of security authorities as Sisi signs the Tripartite Free Trade Area (TFTA) pact at an African summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh.

Interior Minister Magdy Abdel Ghaffar is personally supervising the security measures at the Sharm summit amid conflicts between his officers and loyalists of his predecessor, Mohammad Ibrahim.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters, meanwhile, are often accused in Egypt's media of plotting "terrorist" attacks, and analysts say it is likely they will be accused of being behind the operation in order to justify further sanctions against the group, seen by the administration as Public Enemy Number One.

Muslim Brotherhood leaders are said to be meeting with US officials in Washington - a move which has angered Cairo officials.