Post date: Dec 24, 2013 7:41:52 PM
Some 7,000 people attend mass funeral for victims of bomb blast in Mansoura city.
MANSOURA, EGYPT (DECEMBER 24, 2013) (REUTERS) - Thousands of Egyptians attended a mass funeral on Tuesday (December 24) for the victims of a bomb blast overnight in which 15 people were killed.
At least 12 policemen were killed in the attack, one of the deadliest since the army deposed IslamistPresident Mohamed Mursi in July.
Security officials said the overnight blast in the city of Mansoura, north of Cairo, had also wounded about 140 people.The army-backed government vowed to fight "black terrorism".
The blast prompted a cabinet statement declaring Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organisation, though officials did not directly accuse the group of staging the attack.
The Brotherhood, which is already outlawed, condemned the bombing as "an attack on the unity of the Egyptian people".
Hundreds of angry people in Mansoura stormed and torched buildings and shops they suspected to be owned by Brotherhood members, witnesses and state media said.
The blast underlined the risk of militancy moving to the densely populated Nile Valley from the Sinai Peninsula, where attacks have killed some 200 soldiers and police since July.
The army said a car bomb had been used.
Egypt has endured the bloodiest internal strife in its modern history since the army removed Mursi, the nation's first freely elected leader, on July 3 after big protests against him.
The security forces have killed hundreds of his supporters as part of a campaign to repress hisMuslim Brotherhood, until then Egypt's most powerful political and religious organisation, while lethal attacks on the security forces have proliferated.