Egyptian officials say a man has thrown a makeshift bomb at a synagogue in the capital, Cairo, causing no damage or casualties.
Officials say the man threw a suitcase containing the explosive early Sunday from a window of a hotel across the street from the Shaar Hashamayim synagogue. They say the suitcase landed on the sidewalk in front of the hotel and burst into flames briefly but did not explode.
Officials say the suspect threw the suitcase from the hotel's fourth-floor lobby as he was checking in. He fled the scene and was being pursued by police. The suitcase contained several cans of gasoline, as well as clothing.
The century-old synagogue is located on a major Cairo thoroughfare and is heavily-guarded by Egyptian police. It occasionally holds services for Egypt's tiny Jewish community, which numbers in the dozens, many of them elderly.
Egypt once was home to tens of thousands of Jews. But, almost all of them left in the decades following Israel's establishment in 1948 and its subsequent wars with Egypt and other Arab states. Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty in 1979.
Cairo has seen several small bombings in recent years, including a 2009 blast in a popular bazaar that killed a French tourist.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.
