CAIRO (AA) - Egyptian authorities on Sunday foiled a bid to smuggle three pistols dating back to the Ottoman era into Egypt through Cairo International Airport, the Egyptian Antiquities Ministry said.
The three pistols were brought to Egypt by a Russian traveller, the ministry said in a statement.
Ahmed al-Rawi, a senior ministry official, said the three pistols have ornamented copper butts and steel barrels with two of them having fronts that are modeled after an axe, Al-Rawi said in the statement.
The statement, however, does not mention the country where the Russian arrived from, how he obtained the pistols, or who owns them.
Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mohamed Ibrahim had earlier said that his ministry would not allow his country to turn into a "hub for the international antiquities trade."
He said Egypt had managed to seize antiquities belonging to the old civilizations of Peru and Ecuador, but it had sent them back to the governments in both countries before being smuggled into the coastal Egyptian province of Alexandria. He said these antiquities came from the United States.
Egypt's museums had been subject to repeated looting since the January 2011 revolution, which ushered in an unprecedented security vacuum.
Most outstanding among the looted museums were the Egyptian Museum in the center of Cairo, and the Mallawi Museum in Minya province in Upper Egypt.
By Kawthar al-Kholi
