Hundreds of Egyptians chanted anti-terrorist slogans Friday outside the funeral of a girl killed in an failed assassination attempt on the prime minister.
The body of Shaima Abdel-Halim, 12, lay in a coffin draped in a green cloth covered with sayings from the Koran, Islam's holy book.She was killed and 21 people wounded when a car bomb exploded outside a school Thursday as the motorcade of Prime Minister Atef Sedki passed. The prime minister wasn't hurt.
At the funeral, Minister of Education Hussein Bahaa-el-Din broke into tears when the girl's grandmother screamed at him: "What has she done to them? What is our mistake? We have nothing to do with this."
"Terrorism is the enemy of God," mourners chanted outside the Omar Makram mosque.
The crowd also shouted "Omar Abdel-Rahman is a terrorist," referring to the blind sheik considered the spiritual leader of Islamic radicals fighting to topple Egypt's secular government.
Abdel-Rahman and a dozen of his followers are jailed in New York, charged with plotting to blow up the World Trade Center.
After Thursday's bombing, police in Cairo rounded up 200 suspected Muslim militants for questioning, security sources said on condition of anonymity.
The Jihad group, which assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981, claimed responsibility for Thursday's bombing. It was the third attack against a government minister this year.
More than 230 people have been killed in the past two years in confrontations between the government and Muslim extremists.
"Why are they doing this? This has nothing to do with Islam," said Moustafa Sayed Ali, a house painter who came to the funeral.