CAIRO, Sept 21 (Aswat Masriya)- In his first public statement since taking the oath on Saturday, Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou downplayed the killing of Mexican tourists by Egyptian armed forces, referring to the incidend as a "mistake that doesn't represent a security threat".

He added that an investigation is currently underway and that the security situation in Egypt is generally “stable”.

Eight Mexicans and four Egyptians were killed and 10 were wounded on Sept. 13 near a popular oasis in the Western Desert when, mistaking them for terrorists, Egyptian helicopter gunships bombed the group around 5 times over a period of 3 hours, even after security forces on the ground had stopped them twice and cleared their passage.

The general prosecutor issued a publishing ban on the investigation until its conclusion. The ban includes all media outlets and only allows the publishing of official statements issued by the prosecutor. 

Zaazou also said that tourism traffic increased 5 percent between January and August.

Tourism had reached its peak in 2010, reaching a record of 7.14 million visitors. 

However, the political and security instablility in the aftermath of the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising hit the tourism sector hard.

In its efforts to speed up the recovery, the government has contracted global marketing and advertising agency JWT at an annual cost of $22 million for the next three years.

The minister pointed out that European tourists constituted 70% of tourist influx to Egypt in 2014. He also said that the total number of Russian tourists in 2014 was 3 million.