Cairo reopens Museum of Islamic Art

Islamic art museum reopened three years after car bombing.

The Museum of Islamic Art in central Cairo jas been reopened, three years after the 19th-century Egyptian institution was damaged extensively  in a massive car bomb claimed by Egyptian jihadists.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi reopened the Islamic museum which was closed since the bombing at the adjacent police headquarters on Port Said Street in January 2014.

The blast damaged 179 ancient treasures, of which 160 have been restored successfully, according to Egypt's antiquities minister Khaled el-Enany.

The museum has three new exhibit rooms, with a total of 4,400 antiques now on display, a significant increase on the 1,450 on show before the bomb attack.

The restoration of the two-storey Islamic museum, whose 100,000-piece collection is one of the most important of its kind in the world, was helped with an $8 million donation from the United Arab Emirates as well as funding from UNESCO.

The museum had recently undergone a major renovation prior to the 2014 blast.