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EGYPT: Officials deny VP targeted in shooting

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Egyptian government officials denied reports Saturday that the newly named vice president had been the target of an assassination attempt.

A government statement said a stray bullet from an exchange of gunfire between “criminal elements” struck the lead car in Omar Suleiman’s motorcade as it moved through an area where protests were being staged Jan. 28, the day before Suleiman was appointed vice president.

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The statement said Suleiman, Egypt’s former intelligence chief, was not injured and there was no evidence he was intentionally targeted. It referred to the shooting as a random incident.

NBC News correspondent Richard Engel in Cairo said a U.S. source dismissed reports of an assassination attempt as media-generated rumors.

A senior Egyptian security source who asked not to be named had also dismissed the reports in an interview with Reuters earlier in the day.

Suleiman had been Egypt’s intelligence chief but was appointed the country’s first vice president in President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year reign following the start of mass protests against the regime last week. Early in the day Saturday reports circulated that an attempt on Suleiman’s life had left two of his bodyguards dead.

Wofgang Ischinger, host of the Munich Security Conference taking place Saturday in Germany, at first confirmed reports of the assassination attempt, then backtracked, telling CNN he ‘was led to believe that we had a confirmed report but in fact we didn’t.’

-- Molly Hennessy-Fiske

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