1996 Cairo shooting

At approximately 7am on 18 April 1996, four gunmen affiliated with the Islamist militant group al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya carried out a mass shooting targeting a group of 88 Greek tourists outside the Europa Hotel in Cairo, Egypt. The victims were gathered outside the hotel preparing to board a bus bound for Alexandria when they were attacked.

The shooting killed 18 people in total: 17 Greek tourists and one Egyptian national. Al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya claimed responsibility for the attack, stating that the group had believed the tourists to be Israeli nationals.

In the immediate aftermath, Egyptian security forces launched a large-scale operation to locate and apprehend those responsible. According to Amnesty International, the four gunmen were subsequently located and killed by Egyptian security forces in Upper Egypt. This action took place amid a broader crackdown on militants believed to be behind a wider pattern of attacks on tourists, which were reportedly carried out in retaliation for Israeli military actions in Lebanon.

The attack added significant pressure on the Egyptian government to better protect its tourism industry, which was already a vital but vulnerable economic sector. In the years prior, Egypt had experienced more than 30 assaults on tourist buses, trains, and cruise vessels between 1992 and early 1996, resulting in approximately a dozen deaths. Tourism in Egypt would be further destabilized in 1997 by the Luxor massacre, another attack attributed to al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya, in which 62 people were killed, most of them foreign tourists.

The case is considered resolved insofar as responsibility was claimed by al-Jama'a al-Islamiyya and the four identified gunmen were killed by Egyptian security forces in the subsequent crackdown. No individuals were reported to have faced formal criminal charges or trial in connection with the attack, as the perpetrators did not survive the security response.