Bombing in Cairo kills teenager as attacks continue to rise

Two bombs exploded on Saturday in a Cairo suburb killing a teenager and wounding a woman, officials said, in the latest of a string of blasts to hit the Egyptian capital this week.

The makeshift bombs were planted in a telecommunications building still under construction in the 6 October City district in Giza and were set off by a mobile telephone at around 0900 (0700 GMT), a police investigator at the blast site told AFP.

“An 18-year-old girl has been killed and a woman has been wounded,” senior health official Ahmed al-Ansari told AFP.

Residents said the blast was powerful and shook windows of nearby buildings.

Saturday's blast comes after five makeshift bombs exploded at four Cairo metro stations on Wednesday, while a sixth one blew up at a courthouse. Six people were wounded in those attacks.

The spike in bombings has further rattled Egypt’s stock market, which saw its benchmark index fall by 1.6 percent in the aftermath of the explosions on Wednesday. The index has suffered large losses in recent weeks amid uncertainty about the country’s security and its ability to jumpstart a stagnating economy, which has been hard hit by years of turbulence in the aftermath of the 2011 revolution.

Authorities blame the Muslim Brotherhood for the rise in violence across the country, although they have not presented any evidence to back up their claims, prompting them to blacklist the group as a terrorist organisation and implement a far reaching crackdown on its members.

Since a military backed coup deposed the country’s first elected leader Mohamed Morsi last July, more than 1,400 people have been killed in clashes with police and over 41,000 jailed for politically motivated reasons, according to Egyptian monitoring group Wikithawra.

Militant groups have claimed responsibility for many of the bombings, however, with the al-Qaeda inspired Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (Partisans of Jerusalem) claiming responsibility for a string of attacks on security services as well as a failed assassination attempt against the interior minister in September.

A little-known jihadist group, Ajnad Misr (Soldiers of Egypt), also says they have carried out a number of attacks on police in Cairo.

The government says militants have killed about 500 people, most of them security personnel.