CAIRO: Egyptian investigators have identified two more suspects from a deadly Cairo bombing this month and said they may be planning more attacks, a newspaper said yesterday.

The daily Al-Gomhuria reported both men had “embraced the ideas of jihad (holy war)” and were on the run, bringing to three the number of suspects evading capture for the blast that killed three tourists and the bomber on April 7.

Egypt has said three members of a group suspected of involvement in the bombing had been arrested, but has previously said only one, Ashraf Said Youssef, was still at large.

Al-Gomhuria published pictures of the three fugitives and named the latest two as commerce graduate Ihab Yousri Yassin and teacher Gamal Ahmed Abdul-Aal.

It said Abdul-Aal had left a letter for his family, later handed to police, saying he was leaving for “jihad”.

“The investigations confirmed that the two suspects were involved in the (bombing) and that they are preparing for other individual incidents in the same way,” the newspaper said.

A spokesman from the interior ministry had no immediate comment on the report, but a security source said two more suspects had been identified.

The ministry previously said the bomber, Hassan Raafat Bishindi, was part of a jihadist group and was tricked into thinking he had five minutes to escape after setting a bomb made from about 3kg of explosives and nails.

The blast - which killed a French woman and two men, one French and one American - was the worst attack on foreigners in the Nile valley since 1997, when Islamist militants killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians near the southern town of Luxor.

In October 2004, bombings at three sites on the east coast of the Sinai peninsula killed 34 people. The mastermind was Palestinian and the targets appeared to be Israeli tourists.

About 50 people demonstrated in North Sinai yesterday calling for the release of men from the area held since the October bombings, a security source and organiser said.

They said the demonstrators in the town of El Arish included both men and women calling for the release of their relatives and the end of emergency law that gives the state wide powers of detention.

Protesters were surrounded by heavy security, common at Egyptian demonstrations, but there were no scuffles with police as happened at a similar rally in March, one of the organisers said. –  Reuters