国际英语新闻：Egypt says Palestinian group behind church attack

CAIRO, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) -- Egyptian Interior Minister Habib al- Adly said on Sunday that a Palestinian group linked to al-Qaida was behind the bombing of a church in Alexandria that killed more than 21 people on New Year's Eve.

In a televised address celebrating the National Police Day, Al-Adly named the group as the Army of Islam, a radical Islamic Palestinian terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip.

There are "conclusive evidence indicating the Gaza-based group was behind the planning and conducting of the attack that seized the lives of many Egyptians," the top security official said.

He added that the group had recruited Egyptians, but that could not conceal the role of this group in terrorist acts.

However, a source from the Army of Islam on Sunday denied Egypt 's accusation that it was behind the deadly church blast, saying that "the Army has no relation to the explosion."

The Egyptian ministry said an Egyptian man had been suspected of assisting the group in carrying out the attack.

Ahmad Ibrahim, born in 1984 in Alexandria, admitted during the police investigations that he had traveled many times to Gaza in 2008. He met many members from the Army of Islam group and admired their thoughts, Egypt's official MENA news agency quoted a security source as saying.

The same group asked him last year via the internet to locate important Christians and Jewish worshiping places in Egypt to conduct a terrorist operation, it said.