AFP/Cairo

Egyptian security forces have mistakenly killed 12 people including Mexican tourists while chasing militants in the vast Western Desert, sparking condemnation of what Mexico called a “deplorable” air attack.
A joint police and military operation on Sunday “chasing terrorist elements” had “mistakenly” targeted four pick-up trucks carrying Mexican tourists, the interior ministry said in a statement.
It did not give a casualties breakdown, but said “the incident led to the death of 12 Mexicans and Egyptians and the wounding of 10 others”.
It said the tourists had been in an “off-limits” area, but did not give an exact location.
Mexican Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu told reporters that at least two Mexican tourists had been killed in an air strike.
The group had arrived in Cairo on September 11 and left two days later on their way to the Bahariya oasis, Ruiz Massieu said.
She said six Mexican survivors told Mexico’s ambassador to Cairo that they had stopped for a meal when they “suffered an aerial attack with bombs launched by a plane and helicopters”.
Ruiz Massieu said Mexico had expressed its “deep dismay over these deplorable events” in a diplomatic note to Cairo’s ambassador, demanding a “swift, exhaustive and deep investigation”.
She said Egypt had pledged to create an investigative committee into the incident that would be headed by the prime minister.
In a tweet earlier, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto had demanded “an exhaustive investigation about what happened from the government of Egypt”.
Mexico’s envoy in Cairo had visited wounded nationals in the city’s Dar al-Fouad Hospital where they were listed in stable condition, the foreign ministry in Mexico City said.
Mexican media identified one of the dead as 40-year-old musician Rafael Jose Bejarano Rangel, whose mother, Marisela Rangel, was wounded.
Her sister, Araceli Rangel Davalos, told Milenio television that Marisela was in a stable condition but that they have not yet been able to talk.
The incident was likely to raise further concerns for Egypt’s vital tourism industry, which has struggled to recover from years of political and economic chaos.
The Western Desert, a popular destination for tour groups, extends from the suburbs of Cairo to the border with Libya.
A senior tourism ministry official said the incident happened as the tourists were travelling between Cairo and the Bahariya oasis, about 350km southwest of the capital.
A police source said special forces were on Sunday carrying out an operation involving air support about 150km west of Bahariya.
The desert is also a militant hideout, and Western embassies have long warned against non-essential travel to the area.
Last month, Egypt’s branch of the Islamic State group beheaded a young Croatian there who was working for a French company, and IS has also attacked security forces there several times.
IS in Egypt said in a statement that it had “resisted a military operation in the Western Desert” on Sunday, but gave no other details.
Egypt has been struggling to quell an insurgency by militants since the military overthrew Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in 2013, focused mainly on their primary holdout in the Sinai Peninsula in the east.