The attack by Egyptian security forces that killed 12 people, including eight Mexican tourists, lasted for almost three hours, according to one of the survivors, Susana Calderon.
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Egypt’s Interior Ministry had initially stated that security forces undertaking a counterterrorism operation in the area accidentally targeted the tourist expedition’s four vehicles after they entered a closed military zone.
Mexican foreign minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu has been in Cairo since Wednesday to attend to the victims who remained in a suburban hospital with injuries after the Sunday incident.
Mexico’s government demanded on Thursday that Egypt compensate tourists mistakenly attacked by Egyptian security forces at the weekend in a deadly incident that outraged the Latin American nation.
Families of the victims were also with her while Ruiz Massieu asked Mexican diplomats to speed up paperwork to repatriate the dead.
Another ten people were injured in the incident.
Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto expressed his nation’s “outrage” at the killing of eight tourists by Egyptian security forces as his foreign minister arrived in Cairo Wednesday demanding an urgent inquiry into the “unjustified attack”.
The tourist group was in cars not authorized for tours, and the group did not have permits for the trip, MENA state news agency reported, citing Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism.
A statement from the prosecutor’s office released on Wednesday evening says the ban applies to all media – print, radio, online, and television, both domestic and global .
“We were bombarded five times, always from the air”.
Egypt’s government has compared its war against terror with Mexico’s war on drugs in an open letter regretting the loss of Mexican tourists who were confused for insurgents and killed by Egypt’s military.
Egypt and Mexico are still waiting on the preliminary report from the investigation.
The incident is likely to raise further fears for Egypt’s vital tourism industry, which has struggled to recover from years of turmoil.
Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, is battling an Islamist insurgency that has intensified since mid-2013 when then-army chief Sisi ousted Islamist President Mohamed Mursi, a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, after mass protests against his rule.
But in recent months, militants loyal to the Islamic State group have carried out a series of attacks in more central parts of the country, including the bombing of the Italian Consulate in Cairo and the kidnapping and beheading of a Croatian oil surveyor who was working in the capital.
Egyptian officials claimed the safari convoy had wandered into a restricted area.
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The group of 22 had stopped for a barbecue at Bahariya Oasis in the Western Desert.
