Egypt’s interior minister said yesterday police arrested three members of an Al-Qaeda-linked cell in an alleged transnational plot to bomb a Western embassy and other targets in the country. The suspects were arrested with explosives intended to be used to bomb a Western embassy after an investigation showed threads in Pakistan, Iran and Algeria, Mohamed Ibrahim said at a news conference.

Police “have delivered a successful blow against a terror cell plotting suicide bomb attacks,” said the interior minister.

He did not identify the embassy, but said the militants “were on the verge” of attacking it using a suicide bomber or by detonating a bomb packed with ammonium nitrate — a common fertilizer.

Ibrahim said the suspects were captured with 10 kg of the fertilizer, and a computer containing instructions on bomb-making. The militants had been in touch with an Al-Qaeda leader outside the country, identified as Kurdi Dawud Assadi who is “the head of Al-Qaeda in some west Asian countries.”

One of the suspects associated with Al-Qaeda members in Algeria and received training from the loose-knit militant organization in Pakistan and Iran, Ibrahim said.