Special to WorldTribune.com

Egyptian officials suspect Sinai loyalists of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) set off a bomb near the ancient Luxor temple of Karnak on June 10.

Egypt’s interior ministry said two gunmen were killed and a third was being treated for his injuries. The ministry said some bystanders were injured in the blast but no tourists were wounded.

The governor of Luxor, Mohamed Badr, said the blast may have occurred after police accidentally shot one of the gunmen on his suicide belt.

The Luxor attack was the second this month at a tourist site. Tourism is one of the main sources of revenue for the Egyptian government.

On June 3, gunmen on a motorcycle killed two police officers outside the Giza Pyramids. In February 2014, Sinai militants bombed a tourist bus in the resort town of Taba, killing four people.

“Even if tourists themselves aren’t the targets, as they seemed not to be last week near the pyramids, such events are likely to worry the international community at a time that tourists are starting to return to places like Cairo and Luxor,” said Zack Gold, Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv.

Nearly 15 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, but that figure shrank to 9.5 million during the Arab Spring uprisings of 2013.

The interior ministry commented that the attackers on June 10 had attempted a complex operation much like previous attacks carried out by ISIL-aligned militants in Sinai.

The jihadists have been battling Egypt’s security forces near the border with Israel and Gaza and have claimed responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of security personnel and the beheading of several local residents who they accused of being spies.

  ISIL, ISIL said targeting Egyptian tourist sites; gunmen with suicide belts killed at Luxor, Luxor, Sinai militants, WorldTribune.com