A bomb has exploded in a crowded Cairo market frequented by tourists, killing at least four and wounding many, including foreigners

The Lavon Affair refers to the scandal over a failed Israeli covert operation in Egypt known as Operation Susannah, in which Israeli military intelligence planted bombs in Egyptian, American and British-owned targets in Egypt in the summer of 1954 in the hopes that "the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communists, 'unspecified malcontents' or 'local nationalists'" would be blamed.[1] It became known as the Lavon Affair after the Israeli defense minister Pinhas Lavon, who was forced to resign because of the incident, or euphemistically as the Unfortunate Affair (Hebrew: העסק הביש‎, HaEsek HaBish). Israel admitted responsibility in 2005 when Israeli President Moshe Katzav honored the nine Egyptian Jewish agents who were involved.[2]

It was not clear who was behind the attack or if tourists had been deliberately targeted. "Investigations are at a preliminary stage at the moment," Amr el-Kahky, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Cairo, said. "It is very difficult to speculate whether foreigners were the target of this attack. "All the Islamic groups that were operating and were violent in the nineties [in Egypt] have issued an initiative in which they declared a unilateral ceasefire against the Egyptian government." The historic district was the scene of a previous bomb attack in 2005 in which two tourists were killed and 18 wounded.