CAIRO: Egypt's interior minister said Tuesday that 19 people thought to have links to Al-Qaeda had been arrested in Egypt last month. The group, which included Tunisians and Libyans, “had used Egypt as a transit point from which they would travel to other countries, including Iraq, to join a group called the Islamic State of Iraq,” Habib Al-Adly told the state-owned Al-Ahram daily in an interview. The ISI is the Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq. He said security services had found weapons and ammunition in the group's possession. Adly stressed that the group was not behind a New Year's Day church bombing in Alexandria that left 23 people dead. On Sunday, Egypt blamed the Palestinian group Army of Islam, another Al-Qaeda affiliate, for the church bombing. The Alexandria attack followed threats to Egypt's Copts from the ISI, which claimed an Oct. 31 attack on a Baghdad church in which two priests, 44 worshippers and seven security personnel died. The minister also denied the presence in Egypt of “any terrorist organization linked to Al-Qaeda or other groups.” But he said there have been attempts to mobilize elements trained outside Egypt or recruit people on the Internet. “We are sure that there are dozens of people loyal to Al-Qaeda in Gaza and some of them already have been involved in previous terrorist attempts in Egypt,” he said, blaming a 2009 blast at a Cairo mosque that killed a French tourist on the Palestinian Army of Islam. He said that Hamas group, which rules Gaza, was going after members of the Palestinian Army of Islam who threaten Hamas' attempts to maintain a ceasefire with Israel that has been in place for two years.
