An Egyptian man was arrested outside the US Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday after chemicals in his backpack caught fire, in what authorities said was a botched attack. No one was harmed in the incident, which took place just outside the heavy blast walls that surround the embassy in Garden City, a leafy neighborhood in the heart of the capital. The US Embassy is next to the British Embassy, which is also heavily fortified. A statement released by Egypt’s state information service named the suspect as 24-year-old Abdullah Ayman Abdesamea. “Preliminary investigations suggest that he embraces some extremist ideas and was intending to use them to commit an act of aggression,” the statement said. A witness said she heard a blast and then saw a man with a backpack that had caught on fire close to the Semiramis Hotel, across the road from the embassy premises. Video footage posted on social media showed police arresting the man, who was led away after his pants and shoes were stripped off in the search. The US Embassy said in a tweet that it was "aware of a reported incident" near the embassy and advised American citizens to avoid the area. The area around the embassy is heavily policed, with concrete barriers blocking vehicular traffic in its immediate vicinity. Shortly after the incident, there was an unusually heavy police presence with dozens of officers in the area. Egypt has been fighting an insurgency led by ISIS terrorist group and concentrated in the Sinai Peninsula since the Egyptian military overthrew President Mohamed Mursi of the Muslim Brotherhood in mid-2013.