An unidentified man hurled a suitcase containing a primitive explosive device at the synagogue in central Cairo today but it exploded without injuring anyone, the interior ministry said.
The man threw the case, whose contents included cans of petrol, at 6.15am (0415 GMT), after checking into the hotel across the street from the synagogue, which is on a busy Cairo thoroughfare, a ministry statement said. The man then fled.
More police than usual were outside the building following the blast but morning traffic was flowing as normal a couple of hours later, a witness said.
The interior ministry said the man was being pursued after remains of clothing from his suitcase were found at the scene.
There is always a heavy police presence outside the Jewish place of worship in the capital of Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
A bomb that exploded in a busy Cairo tourist area in February 2009 killed a French tourist, the first fatal attack on tourists in Egypt since bombs killed at least 23 people at a resort in the Sinai peninsula in 2006.
Egypt has been rounding up youths accused of links to Islamist groups over the past months, and analysts say this reflects a growing suspicion that militant ideologies are wooing recruits to carry out sporadic attacks.
Analysts say they expect isolated incidents but do not see signs of a return to an insurgency on the scale of the 1990s, when Egyptian security forces fought gunbattles to quash an organised Islamist rebellion.
Reuters