Egypt Releases Sketch of 'Suicide Bomber'
LE CAIRE (AFP) -- Egypt released on Wednesday a sketch by forensic artists that attempts to reconstruct the face of the man alleged to have blown himself up outside an Alexandria church and killed 21 people on New Year's Day. Police said the photo was distributed to the news media in hopes that its publication might yield clues on the identity of the man. The reconstruction was carried out using remains found at the site of the blast, which also wounded 79 people. On Tuesday, authorities said their main lead was a severed head found at the scene and that surgeons were called in to try to reconstruct the features of the face, which was thought to belong to a man in his 30s. They said they thought the man had planned to enter the church, which was holding a New Year's Eve mass, but was deterred by police guards at its gates. He was then said to have set off an explosives belt packed with between 10 and 15 kilogrammes (22-33 pounds) of TNT, bolts and ball bearings as the congregants emerged shortly after midnight. No one has yet claimed the attack, which was Egypt's worst since one on a Sinai tourist resort in 2006, but President Hosni Mubarak said "foreign hands" were involved. It came two months after Al-Qaeda gunmen attacked a Syriac Catholic church in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda later said its objective was to force the release of two Coptic priests' wives in Egypt it claimed had converted to Islam and were being held against their will. Copts, who account for about 10 percent of Egypt's 80-million population, are the Middle East's largest religious minority. The have been the targets of attacks and complain of discrimination.