Egypt’s interior minister said on Tuesday that 19 people thought to have links to Al-Qaeda had been arrested in Egypt last month.
The group, which included Tunisians and Libyans, “had used Egypt as a transit point from which they would travel to other countries, including Iraq, to join a group called the Islamic State of Iraq,” Habib al-Adly told the state-owned Al-Ahram daily in an interview.
The ISI is the Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq.
He said security services had found weapons and ammunition in the group’s possession.
Adly stressed that the group was not behind a New Year’s Day church bombing in Alexandria that left 23 people dead.
On Sunday, Egypt blamed the Palestinian group Army of Islam, another Al-Qaeda affiliate, for the church bombing.
The Alexandria attack followed threats to Egypt’s Copts from the ISI, which claimed an October 31 attack on a Baghdad church in which two priests, 44 worshippers and seven security personnel died.