Five people were arrested after firing birdshot at Prime Minister Hesham Qandil’s motorcade of vehicles on Sunday night.
A small pickup truck infiltrated the motorcade as it passed over a bridge in Dokki as Qandil was on his way home from work.
Qandil’s bodyguards tried to push the truck away and one of the passengers fired at the procession, hitting an officer and a citizen, according to a statement from the Ministry of Interior. The passengers hit Taha Sayed, a street vendor, with their car as they tried to escape and injured Nabil El-Sawy, a police officer.
“A police force from the Giza Directorate chased the shooters down, arrested them and confiscated the guns they used,” the statement read. According to the statement, the men were caught and arrested in Al-Nahda Square, near Giza Zoo.
The statement claimed that the incident was not political. The assailants were carrying weapons because they were going to a fight in Old Cairo.
The assailants were engaged in a fight on Saturday and set out on Sunday to reignite the clashes. They thought they were being chased when they fired birdshot in the air, according to a statement by the General Prosecution.
Cabinet spokesperson Alaa Al-Hadidy told state news agency MENA that Qandil was not harmed in the incident.
Al-Hadidy said that this was not an attempt to assassinate the prime minister.
The prosecution ordered the detention of Islam Abo Bakr, Hanafy Hamed, Mohamed Ali, Mahmoud Azzaz and Mohamed Soliman for four days pending investigation.
They were charged with possession of unlicenced weapons, resisting arrest, violence, and attempted murder.
The General Prosecutor ordered an investigation into the incident to be supervised by Ayman Al-Bably, Attorney-General for the North Giza Prosecution Attorney, and chief prosecutor for Dokki Sherif Tawfik.
National Salvation Front Leader and Political Science Professor Amr Hamzawy condemned the attack on the Prime Minister regardless of the motives or its details. “No to violence against the people I disagree with politically… it’s completely rejected and condemned,” Hamzawy stated on his official Twitter account.
