It also recalled the bombing of another Red Sea resort, Taba on the Israeli border, in October. Thirty-four people died in those blasts, which Egyptian authorities blamed on a Palestinian leading an unaffiliated group. Last month Israel stepped up warnings to its own citizens, saying the risk of another such attack had risen.

In April, three tourists were killed and others wounded in two bombings in the capital, Cairo.

FIREBALL

Ahmed Mustafa, a waiter at a coffee shop near the first of the explosions, said a massive fireball tore through the car park outside a shopping mall in Sharm el-Sheikh town. The explosion turned cars into skeletons of twisted metal, blew down masonry on nearby buildings and shattered windows for hundreds of metres (yards) around. "I have never been so scared in the whole of my life," British tourist Samantha Hardcastle told BBC television.

Thirteen Italians and 15 other foreigners were among the wounded, a Tourism Ministry spokeswoman said. She had no firm figures for the number of non-Egyptian fatalities. Egypt's tourism minister worried that the attacks would hit the $6.6 billion tourism industry, the country's biggest private sector employer, in the short term.

The first explosion hit the old market in Sharm el-Sheikh town shortly after 1 a.m. (2200 GMT), filling the air with fire and smoke, residents said.

"I saw a car flying up in the air, people running," restaurant owner Yehya Mohammed said by telephone. "I do not think I will ever forget this in my life. This is a horrible setback for tourism here."

A rescue official said many wounded were Egyptian workers gathered at a cafe in the old market. Seventeen of the dead were burnt beyond recognition. Sharm residents said they heard two more explosions coming from Naama Bay in quick succession, blasts that could be felt 10 km (six miles) away. Witnesses said the first of these hit the hotel and the second a taxi rank. The blasts came at a time when many tourists were still out in bars and markets in the popular and hitherto safe resort.

CONFUSION

"The whole area was quickly covered in debris. There was a huge ball of smoke that mushroomed up. It was mass hysteria," Charlie Ives, a London policeman on holiday, told the BBC.

Tourist Fabio Basone said: "People were trying to run in any direction to get away but were not clear where to go."

Security sources said at least one car that blew up had special plates indicating it had come over the Israeli border at Taba on the Sinai peninsula. "We condemn this act in the strongest possible terms. There can be no excuse for the targeting of innocent civilians," a U.S. State Department spokesman said in Washington.

Egyptian Tourism Minister Ahmed el-Maghrabi said: "These incidents will have an effect in the short term (on tourism)." Foreigners have been targeted in Egypt in earlier attacks. Tourism is a major source of revenues and employment in Egypt, which needs to create about 650,000 jobs a year for its youthful population. Some analysts say Egypt attracted extra visitors this year after many avoided tsunami-hit Asia. Reuters

Al-Qaida-linked militants claim responsibility for resort bomb

23/07/2005 - 09:54:02 - A group citing ties to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for today's Sharm El Sheikh bombings that killed at least 62 people, according to a statement posted on an Islamic website. The group, calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al Qaida, in Syria and Egypt, said that its "holy warriors targeted the Ghazala Gardens hotel and the Old Market in Sharm El Sheikh".

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified.

The brigades were one of two Islamist groups that claimed responsibility for the October 7 bombings at Sinai Peninsula Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34 people.

"Your brothers, the holy warriors of the martyr Abdullah Azzam Brigades succeeded in launching a smashing attack on the Crusaders, Zionists and the renegade Egyptian regime in Sharm El Sheikh," said the statement. "We reaffirm that this operation was in response to the crimes committed by the forces of international evil, which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechnya. "We declare it loud and clear that we will not be frightened by the whips of the Egyptian torturers and we will not tolerate violation of our brothers' land of Sinai," the statement added in an apparent reference to tourists who travel from neighbouring Israel to Sinai Peninsula for holidays.

The Abdullah Azzam Brigades are apparently named after Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian militant who led Islamic militants in Afghanistan and was killed in 1989 by a roadside bomb, and was regarded as the one-time "spiritual mentor" of al Qaida chief Osama bin Laden.

Azzam studied Islamic theology in Egypt before travelling to Saudi Arabia where he lectured in Islamic law. During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Azzam was financed by Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states to establish camps for Muslim militants who joined the fight against the Russian forces. - IOL

Holiday resort blasts leave 75 dead

23/07/2005 - 10:50:28 - A rapid series of car bombs and another blast ripped through a luxury hotel and a coffee shop in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheik today, killing at least 75, police said.

Terrified European and Arab tourists fled into the night, and rescue workers said the death toll was almost certain to rise.

The attack, Egypt's deadliest terror attacks, appeared well co-ordinated. Two car bombs, possibly suicide attackers, went off simultaneously at 1.15a, some 2.5 miles apart. A third bomb, believed to have been hidden in a sack, detonated at about the same time near a beachside walkway where tourists often stroll at night.

Several hours after the attack, a group citing ties to al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the explosion on an Islamic website.

The group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al Qaida, in Syria and Egypt, was one of two extremist groups that also claimed responsibility for October bombings at the Egyptian resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34. The group also claimed responsibility for a Cairo bombing in late April.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, but a top Egyptian official said there are some indications the latest bombings were linked to last autumn's Taba explosions.

"We have some clues, especially about the car that was exploded in the Old Market, and investigators are pursuing," said Interior Minister Habib al-Adli. He called it "an ugly act of terrorism".

Neighbouring countries, the US, Israel and others condemned the attacks. Neighbouring Jordan said it was immediately tightening security at its tourist sites.

The blasts killed 75 people, police officials in Sharm El Sheikh said.

At least eight foreigners were among the dead, Al-Adli said.

The dead included British, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis and Qataris, a security official said.

The death toll was likely to rise, rescue workers said. The lobby of the 176-room Ghazala Gardens hotel in Sharm's Naama Bay, the main strip of hotels, collapsed into a pancaked pile of concrete. Rescue workers feared more victims were still buried under the rubble.

David Stewart, a tourist from from Liverpool, England, was staying with his wife and two teenage daughters at the Ghazala Gardens when the explosion hit. The windows of his room were smashed, and he and his family ran.

"Somebody shouted 'Keep moving'," he said. "The lights were out. I couldn't tell what was happening."

His family, like many others, fled toward the back of the hotel to take refuge in a grassy lawn near the pool. There, hundreds spent the night, some lying on pool mattresses.

On the other side of Sharm in the Old Market, a second car bomb in a minibus park sent a ball of flaming wreckage shooting over a nearby beach and into the sea and littered the sand with body parts. Overturned chairs, broken waterpipes and pools of blood were scattered around the ravaged coffeeshop nearby, frequented by Egyptians who work in the resorts.

"The country's going to come to a stop. That's it!" sobbed Samir al-Mitwalli, who arrived in Sharm only a month ago to work as a driver. "Who's paying the price? Whoever did this wants to destroy the economy."

The string of attacks stunned a town that has long been dedicated to scuba diving at the famed coral reefs off its shores and partying on the beches.

Sharm El Sheikh has expanded at a furious pace in recent years, making it a major player in Egypt's vital tourism industry, drawing Europeans, Israelis and Arabs from oil-producing Gulf nations.

President Hosni Mubarak has a residence there where he spends the winter, and the town has been host to multiple summits for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The attacks last autumn in Taba ended a long halt in militant violence. The last major attack was in 1997, when Islamic militants killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at the Pharaonic Temple of Hatshepsut outside Luxor in southern Egypt. Today's violence was the deadliest since Islamic militant attacks began in Egypt in 1992.

There were signs that the bombings were by suicide attackers. Witnesses in the blast that hit the coffeeshop reported the attack vehicle was moving when it blew up, and the governor of South Sinai, Mustafa Afifi, said the car in the Ghazala attack broke through security into the front driveway of the hotel before exploding.

Britain's ambassador to Egypt, Sir Derek Plumbly, told BBC radio that eight Britons were among the injured, but no British deaths had been confirmed.

The attack that so far appeared to have killed the most foreign tourists was a bomb hidden in a sack that went off by the beach-side pedestrian walkway, killing six foreigners and an Egyptian, said a security official in Sharm.

The far heavier damage was caused by the two car bombs, which sent flames and palls of smoke over Sharm and shook windows as far as a mile away.

The blast swept through the interior of the sprawling, low-built Ghazala hotel, shattering windows and shredding metal. Blood splattered some of the walls, and tree limbs from its gardens were strewn everywhere.

The blast at the Old Market tore through a coffeeshop on the side of the minibus lot, killing at least 17 Egyptians who were sitting there, said a security official in the operations control room in Cairo monitoring the crisis.

More than eight hours later, the overturned shell of a minibus was still smouldering, near a large crater in the asphalt. Witnesses said the minibus was driving nearby when the explosives-laden vehicle swept into the lot, and the minibus driver tried to swerve to avoid the blast. The square's clock was stopped at the time of the explosion.

"This flaming mass flew over my head, faster than a torpedo, and plunged into the water," said Mursi Gaber, who at the time of the blast was putting up decorations on a nearby beach. "There were body parts all over the steps down to the beach."

"This is a security farce," said Omar Ezzideen, owner of a children's clothing store in a nearby mall whose windows were shattered by the blast. "How can something like this happen here? How could (explosives) enter here? The national economy is based on this." - IOL

Egypt terror probe widens

Tuesday, July 26, 2005 Posted: 0455 GMT (1255 HKT)

Police have identified five Pakistanis they want to trace.

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AP) -- Police said Monday they were searching for five Pakistani men in their widening investigation into Egypt's deadliest terror attack, which killed scores of people at this Red Sea resort. Egypt sacked its two security chiefs for the Sinai peninsula after the Saturday bombings in their region. The Health Ministry said 64 people were killed but local hospitals put the toll at 88, saying the ministry count does not include sets of body parts.

Early Monday morning, police launched a sweep in a desert mountain area about 24 miles from Sharm's main strip of hotels after they got a tip that several unidentified men were seen fleeing in that direction, security officials said. Police at checkpoints around this resort also were circulating photographs of five Pakistanis who apparently were among a group of nine Pakistanis who arrived in Sharm el-Sheik from Cairo on July 5, according to two investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the probe's sensitivity.

The five were identified as Mohammed Anwar, 30; Rashid Ali, 26; Mohammed Aref, 26; Musaddeq Hussein, 18; and Mohammed Akhtar, 30. The pictures, which gave the men's names and passport numbers, also were on posters put up in Cairo, apparently out of concern they were in the capital either before or since the attacks. But officials did not say the men were known to be connected to the bombing. One senior official said the men had overstayed their visas and police were looking widely into any illegal activity in the wake of the blasts. If any involvement of Pakistanis is confirmed, it would suggest that those behind Saturday's bombings belong to a much wider terror network than previously believed.

President Bush signed a condolence book Monday at the Egyptian Embassy in Washington and said the people responsible for the deadly attack "have no heart." Bush said his visit was meant to "reiterate my country's strong desire to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the people of Egypt and bring justice to those who killed innocent people."

Egyptian security forces already have detained more than 70 people in Sharm and other parts of the Sinai since the attacks.

On Sunday, police said they were hunting for three bombers who may have escaped after the attack. They said a fourth attacker apparently was a suicide bomber who crashed a pickup truck laden with explosives hidden under vegetables into a hotel lobby. Another avenue investigators have been following is that Saturday's attacks were carried out by a Sinai-based network believed responsible for the October bombings in the Sinai tourist resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, about 125 miles north of Sharm el-Sheik. Those attacks killed 34 people.

Police said Sunday they were conducting DNA testing on the remains of a suicide bomber found Saturday in a car that rammed into the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay, the city's main tourist area. Two other blasts rocked a parking lot near the hotel and an area about two miles away called the Old Market. The DNA was being compared to samples taken from the parents of five suspects still at large from the October attacks to determine if there was a match, a police official said in el-Arish, where the parents live.

Egyptian authorities have portrayed the Taba bombings as an extension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than a homegrown Islamic militant movement or an al Qaeda-linked operation. They said a Palestinian who died in the attacks had recruited Bedouins and Egyptians to plot the bombings. But the sophistication of the Sharm bombings -- and their timing on the heels of two rounds of attacks in London -- raised worries of an international connection.

The involvement of Pakistanis in the attack in Sharm el-Sheik would be unprecedented, as non-Egyptians rarely have been linked to attacks here. It also would be extremely difficult for a group of young Pakistanis not to be noticed in Sharm, one of the most heavily policed cities in Egypt and a favorite residence of President Hosni Mubarak. Pakistani involvement also would increase suspicions that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network may have been involved. The Saudi-born bin Laden is popular among militant Pakistani groups and is known to enjoy support in tribal areas close to the Afghan border.

British authorities have been seeking several Pakistanis in connection to this month's deadly bombings in London, and Washington has raised the possibility that both the London and Sharm attacks were planned by al Qaeda. Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Monday that al Qaeda's command and communication system in his country has been eliminated and that the network could not have orchestrated terrorist attacks in London or Sharm el-Sheik from Pakistan.

"Is it possible in this situation that an al Qaeda man sitting here, no matter who he is, may control things in London, Sharm el-Sheik, Istanbul or Africa. This is absolutely wrong," he said.

Two claims of responsibility

South Sinai Gov. Mustafa Afifi said Monday that 17 foreigners, including Westerners and citizens from other Arab states, were killed in the attacks. At least one American was killed. Las Vegas native Kristina Miller was vacationing in Egypt with her British boyfriend Kerry Davies, celebrating her 27th birthday Friday night, when the bombs went off an hour after midnight

Two Italians and a Czech were confirmed killed, according to their governments, and a hospital official in Sharm said two Britons and two Germans were killed. Several Italians and Britons were unaccounted for.

One of the two groups that claimed responsibility for the attacks warned in a new Web statement posted Monday of a "total war" unless "Jews and Christians leave our country within 60 days." If not, "you will see what you've never dreamed of," said the statement by the Holy Warriors of Egypt, signed by its "general leader, Hamoudi al-Masri," an apparent pseudonym. The message had numerous grammatical mistakes in Arabic.

The group had not been heard of before its claim this weekend. A conflicting claim was issued by an al Qaeda-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which also took responsibility for last October's bombings in Taba and Ras al-Shitan. The statements could not be verified.

On Sunday, security officials said the bombers appeared to have entered Sharm in two pickup trucks loaded with explosives hidden under vegetables. Afifi said the Ghazala suicide bomber ran down and killed two security guards before crashing into the reception area and detonating his explosives, which investigators have said weighed 660 pounds. Shortly after, a backpack filled with explosives left by another attacker blew up near the parking lot and taxi stand close to the Ghazala, he said.

The terrorist involved in the third blast in the Old Market intended to attack a hotel, possibly the Iberotel Palace, Afifi said. But the attacker was stopped in a line of cars at a nearby police checkpoint and got out of his pickup before it exploded. Police are investigating whether that attacker died in the blast.

Before the attacks, the militants rubbed serial numbers off the trucks' engines, the officials said. Such serial numbers had been a key clue Egyptian investigators had used to track down those behind the October bombings at Taba and Ras Shitan. - CNN

Egyptian experts say Mossad could be behind bombings

7/25/2005 3:12:00 PM GMT

Several Egyptian security experts and political analysts said that the Mossad, Israel's spy agency, was behind Saturday's attacks on the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.

Similar accusations were made against Israel in the past, particularly after last year's attack at the Taba Hotel in October and after the 9/11 attacks in the United States.

Saturday's pre-dawn blasts killed more than 64 people, according to Egypt's health ministry, although hospital officials put the toll as high as 88. Many Egyptian security officials said at least one car used in the bombings had special plates indicating it had come from the Israeli border at Taba on the Sinai peninsula.

On Saturday, Egypt's state-run television interviewed retired army general Fuad Allam, who said that he was confident that Israel played a key role in Sharm al-Sheikh bombings. Fuad also said that investigations showed that the mastermind of the Taba attack, which killed more than 34 people, was a Palestinian "apparently linked to Israel's security forces." He added: "I'm almost certain that Israel was also behind this attack because they want to undermine our government and deal a severe blow to our economy. The only ones who benefit from these attacks are the Israelis and the Americans."

Other Egyptian political figures and prominent journalists and editors interviewed by Arabic TV channels made similar accusations. Dia Rashwan, a political expert, said that Israel is the only country that benefits from such attacks. Dismissing the idea that "al-Qaeda" was behind the bombings, Rashwan explained: "We are giving al- Qaeda more credit than it deserves. What happened here negates the possibility that the attacks were carried out by ordinary elements. This is the work of an extraordinary element - one that benefits from such attacks. All the available details indicate that only the Israelis could have done this."

Majdi Birnawi, another security expert, said that the Mossad was behind the attacks. "I believe that Mossad or some other [Israeli] security organization carried out this attack," Birnawi said he believed the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings were related to the Taba attacks, in which 12 Israelis were killed. "Everyone knows that there are no Israelis in Sharm e-Sheikh," he said. "There are only Western tourists there. That's why it's wrong to assume that the perpetrators were targeting Israelis."

- Aljazeera

Egypt rules out Pakistanis' role in blasts

An Egyptian diplomat said Tuesday that Pakistanis were not involved in the weekend bombing spree in this Red Sea resort, despite the police circulating photographs of five Pakistani men a day earlier.

Police, meanwhile, carried out more arrests in connection with the country's deadliest terrorist attack. Police distributed photos of five Pakistani men at checkpoints in and around Sharm el-Sheik on Monday, and several newspapers published the same pictures provided by the Interior Ministry. There has been no direct link between the wanted men and Saturday's three pre-dawn bombings, even though at least two security officials said the Pakistanis had flown into Sharm from Cairo several days earlier.

"No Pakistani national was involved in the terrorist attacks that rocked Sharm el-Sheik late last Saturday," the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement.

Egypt's ambassador to Pakistan, Hussein Haridy, said he informed the Pakistani Government by telephone late on Monday of the Egyptian conclusion. Posters of the missing Pakistanis were put up in Cairo. Officials now say they are seeking the men for illegally entering Egypt.

Separately, Egyptian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation, said police detained an unspecified number of people overnight, including women, in the Husseinat and Muqataa villages in the northern Sinai Peninsula near the border with the Gaza Strip. The officials said they were detained as part of the Sharm investigation, but it was unclear what involvement if any they had to the attacks. Police also have been carrying out desert sweeps outside Sharm in search of suspects. At least 70 people have been arrested for questioning, and some are believed to have been released.

On Saturday, two blasts rocked the popular Naama Bay tourist strip, including a suicide truck bomb attack that devastated the reception area of the Ghazala Gardens Hotel and a knapsack filled with explosives that detonated nearby soon after.

Three kilometres away, another truck bomb ravaged an area called the Old Market, which is popular with Egyptians.

The death toll stood at 90, according to the head of the Sharm el-Sheik hospital that treated the victims, but Egypt's Health Ministry has put it at 64.

Hospitals said the ministry count excludes some sets of body parts. South Sinai's governor said on Monday that 17 of the dead were non-Egyptians, including Westerners and citizens from other Arab states. American Kristina Miller, from Las Vegas, along with an Italian couple, a Briton and a Czech have been confirmed killed by their governments, while 10 Britons and several Italians also remain unaccounted for. The chief of Sharm's hospital said two Britons and two Germans were killed, but their governments have not confirmed those numbers.

Britain's Foreign Office Tuesday released a statement from the families of a British couple, Jeremy Lakin, 34, and Annalie Vickers, 31, who have been missing since the explosions and are feared dead. If proven, their deaths would take the number of Britons confirmed killed to three.

Meanwhile, 20 of Egypt's top movie and music stars visited Sharm Tuesday, touring the attack scenes and visiting some of the hospitalized Egyptians.

Source: China Daily

EGYPT BOMB SUSPECT NAMED

27.7.2005. 09:02:23 - Egyptian investigators say they have identified a man suspected to be one of the bombers who died in the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks.

Three days after the blasts many aspects of the investigation are still shrouded in mystery with no clear direction emerging in the probe so far.

There is contradictory information on the casualty toll and three different claims for the attacks.

Security sources said investigators suspect a known Sinai Islamist called Yusef Badran was one of the suicide bombers involved in the triple bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort on Saturday, the deadliest in Egypt. DNA tests were being carried out on his family and compared with the remains of the suspected Ghazala Gardens hotel bomber, the most devastating of the strikes.

Badran had already been suspected of involvement in another wave of attacks that killed at least 34 people in the Sinai resorts of Taba and Nuweiba further north last October. His family in the Sinai town of Al-Arish said he had been missing for months.

Egyptian forces have been combing the Sinai since Saturday's bombings, arresting around 200 people.

Meanwhile officials fiercely denied the involvement of any Pakistani nationals in the triple bombings. Egyptian security sources had said Monday that six Pakistanis who entered the country earlier this month were being sought over the Sharm bombings. Their pictures were among those of dozens of suspects posted in police stations in the Sharm el-Sheikh area and in Cairo. But Sharawi said security services never distributed the pictures.

Egypt's ambassador to Pakistan Hussein Haridy said he had informed Islamabad "that no Pakistani national was involved in the terrorist acts that rocked Sharm el-Sheikh late last Saturday."

Mr Adly's first adviser, Mohammed Sharawi, also said the six Pakistanis mentioned in media reports were not linked to the bombings. - SBS.com

Egypt Attack Probe Expanded To 15

CAIRO, Egypt , July 27, 2005 (CBS/AP) A total of 15 militants are being sought for playing a role in the Sharm el-Sheik bombings, both Bedouin and non-Bedouin, but all with links to an earlier attack last fall and most operating from a desert town near the Gaza Strip, officials said Wednesday.

As it broadened the search for suspects, the government found itself scrambling for new ways to combat what now appears to be an organized, strong militants' network something the government has long insisted did not exist.

The Saturday bombings have raised concerns that the government's past tactics, including widespread arrests last fall in the Sinai's vast deserts, did little to uproot support for militants.

The list of 15 names includes a man identified as Moussa Badran, the alleged suicide attacker who rammed a pickup truck packed with explosives into Sharm's Ghazala Gardens Hotel during the Saturday attacks.

The list also includes Bedouin tribesmen and other natives of Sinai, said security officials, who declined to be identified because the release of the information had not been authorized. Most on the list are at-large and are believed to have carried out, planned or prepared the Sharm attacks. Most also are connected to bombings last October in two Sinai resorts farther north, officials said.

Most also are believed to be operating from the town of el-Arish, or villages around it, in the northern Sinai near the Gaza Strip.

The security failures in Sharm were twofold: First, militants were able to get 1,100 pounds of explosives into the heavily policed resort, despite checkpoints in and out.

Second, the government's nine months of security sweeps and hundreds of arrests since the October bombings have apparently failed to rid the region of militants.

The government acknowledged failure Monday, sacking Sinai's two security chiefs and starting disciplinary procedures against at least a dozen police and security officers for dereliction of duty, according to security officials. "They are mostly those on duty at the time of the bombings," said one of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Officials also are following every possible lead on the explosives, including that they may have come from neighboring Gaza, neighboring Israel, Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

Either way, the final leg of the explosives' journey into Sharm is likely to have taken place on desert routes where security is thinly spread or doesn't exist at all.

One possible source is Sinai's Bedouin, some of whom still follow a nomadic lifestyle and pay little heed to official authority, living by tribal justice.

Some earn money growing cannabis in valleys between rugged and largely inaccessible mountains, that are the occasional scene of armed clashes between growers and security forces dispatched to eradicate their illicit crops.

Many more rely on smuggling; including the smuggling of illegal workers into Israel and the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip.

"The Bedouin have always been something of a problem to authorities," said Claude Moniquet, a terror expert who heads the Brussels-based European Strategic, Intelligence and Security Center. "They smuggle anything and everything."

But any Bedouin involvement in the Sharm or the October bombings would most likely be for financial gain, not ideology, he said. Until the bombings at Taba last fall, Egypt had enjoyed a reprieve from Islamic violence since 1997. But the October bombings, three attacks on foreign tourists in Cairo earlier this year and the Sharm attacks have shattered the lull, and indicated the emergence of another network of militants.

Authorities, however, have disputed that. They linked the October's bombings to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and dismissed the Cairo attacks as the work of an isolated cell of misguided young people. They are following the same tactic now, strongly discouraging the idea that the Sharm bombings might have been linked to Osama bin Laden's terror group. But both sets of Sinai bombings did bear the hallmarks of an al Qaeda job.

Three groups claimed responsibility for the attacks. One of the groups warned in an Internet statement Monday of a "total war" unless "Jews and Christians leave our country within 60 days." The statement was signed by the Holy Warriors of Egypt.

A conflicting claim was issued Saturday by an al Qaeda-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which also claimed responsibility for the October bombings. None of the statements' authenticity could be confirmed.

A third claim was posted Tuesday on the Internet in the name of a previously unknown militant group purporting links to al Qaeda. The statement said the group, called Egyptian Tawhid and Jihad, attacked the "Crusaders" in Sharm on orders from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian-born deputy Ayman al-Zawahri "in support of our brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The claim, which was posted on a militant Islamic Web site where statements by the al Qaeda terror network have previously appeared, could not be independently authenticated. Tawhid and Jihad is Arabic for monotheism and holy war.

Egypt's insurgents of the 1990s sought to topple Mubarak's regime and replace it with a purist Islamic state.

Sending scores of extremists to the gallows and jailing thousands without charge helped quell the violence of the 1990s. But it appeared to do little to uproot the causes of militancy in a nation of 72 million people, with economic and social imbalances.

The government launched educational programs in jails to persuade militants to abandon violence, and some of their leaders publicly repented, writing "revisionist" literature.

Others are holding out, refusing to renounce their ideology, while large segments of society, including the urban middle-class, have moved to the religious right.

While generally moderate, many are scornful of Western civilization, harbor hatred for the United States and are sympathetic toward the insurgency in Iraq. - CBS

Suicide Bomber Identified in Egypt Attack

Tuesday July 26, 2005 5:01 PM - SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt (AP) - Investigators have identified a body they suspect is that of a suicide bomber in the weekend attacks that killed scores in this Red Sea resort, saying he was an Egyptian with Islamic militant ties, security officials said Tuesday as investigators questioned dozens more people. Security officials also said Egyptian authorities received information about an imminent terrorist attack in Sharm el-Sheik days ahead of the devastating bombings. However, authorities believed the attack would target casinos, so security was increased around those sites, two officials said on condition of anonymity because release of the information was not authorized.

The officials, who have knowledge of the investigation, would not say where the tip came from but said security forces were put on alert in the resort on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula several days before the pre-dawn Saturday attacks.

But instead of casinos, the bombers in two explosives-laden trucks targeted hotels just after 1 a.m. Saturday. One plowed into the Ghazala Gardens reception area, leveling the lobby. A second headed for another hotel but got caught in traffic and detonated before reaching its target.

Police using DNA tests identified one of the bodies found at the Ghazala site as Youssef Badran, an Egyptian Sinai resident who they said has links to Islamic militants, security officials said. Those links led the officials to suspect he was the bomber in the attack, they said. Police held members of Badran's family for questioning and were trying to determine his associates, the officials said. Across Sinai, security forces took in 70 people for questioning Tuesday, bringing to 140 the number held since Saturday's pre-dawn blasts.

Also Tuesday, an Egyptian diplomat said Pakistanis were not involved in the bombings, despite police circulating photographs of five Pakistani men a day earlier. Police distributed photos of five Pakistani men at checkpoints in and around Sharm el-Sheik on Monday, and several state-owned newspapers published the same pictures provided by the Interior Ministry. There has been no direct link between the wanted men and the bombings, even though at least two security officials said the Pakistanis had flown into Sharm from Cairo several days earlier.

'No Pakistani national was involved in the terrorist attacks that rocked Sharm el-Sheik late last Saturday,'' the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement.

Egypt's ambassador to Pakistan, Hussein Haridy, said he informed the Pakistani government by telephone late Monday of the Egyptian conclusion. Posters of the missing Pakistanis were put up in Cairo. Officials now say they are seeking the men for illegally entering Egypt.

Two blasts rocked the popular Naama Bay tourist strip, including the suicide truck bomb attack at the hotel. Two miles away, a third truck bomb ravaged an area called the Old Market, which is popular with Egyptians. The remains of another suspected bomber were discovered at the Old Market, and DNA tests were being conducted, a security official said.

The death toll stood at 88, according to the head of the Sharm el-Sheik hospital that treated the victims, but Egypt's Health Ministry has put it at 64. Hospitals said the ministry count excludes some sets of body parts.

South Sinai's governor said Monday that 17 of the dead were non-Egyptians, including Westerners and citizens from other Arab states. One American, Kristina Miller, 27, of Las Vegas, was killed.

Meanwhile, 20 of Egypt's top movie and music stars visited Sharm on Tuesday, touring the attack scenes and visiting some of the hospitalized Egyptians. 'I am here to tell my people that we shouldn't let terrorism have its way,'' director Youssef Chahine said while touring the gutted hotel. 'The people are very sad but they are not afraid. It's not the first time but it is the most vicious one.''

Investigators are pursuing a possible connection to October's bombings in two Sinai resorts farther north, Taba and Ras Shitan, that killed 34 people, including many Israelis. DNA from the suspected bombers' remains were being compared with samples from the parents of five suspects still at large from the Taba blasts. The Sharm attacks had hallmarks of other al-Qaida-style operations - near-simultaneous bombings using a mix of techniques, including vehicle-borne and other bombs. Three groups claimed responsibility for the attacks. One of the groups warned in an Internet statement Monday of a 'total war'' unless 'Jews and Christians leave our country within 60 days.'' The statement was signed by the Holy Warriors of Egypt.

A conflicting claim was issued Saturday by an al-Qaida-linked group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, which also claimed responsibility for the October bombings. None of the statements' authenticity could be confirmed.

A third claim was posted Tuesday on the Internet in the name of a previously unknown militant group purporting links to al-Qaida. The statement said the group, called Egyptian Tawhid and Jihad, attacked the 'Crusaders'' in Sharm on orders from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his Egyptian-born deputy Ayman al-Zawahri 'in support of our brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan.''

The claim, which was posted on a militant Islamic Web site where statements by the al-Qaida terror network have previously appeared, could not be independently authenticated. Tawhid and Jihad is Arabic for monotheism and holy war. - guardian.co.uk

Egypt had warning before resort attacks

Compiled by Daily Star staff Thursday, July 28, 2005

The Egyptian authorities had received a warning following the July 7 London bombings that the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh could be targeted, security sources said yesterday. "Following the latest attacks in London, the Egyptian security services had received information that terror attacks could be perpetrated in Sharm al-Sheikh," a senior police source said.

The source said "the warning came four days before the three explosions rocked the city." The attacks struck Egypt's flagship holiday resort on July 23, at the height of the tourist season. "Police forces were put on high alert and security was beefed up in the city, where police presence and checks were increased," the same source said.

The official denied reports that security had only been strengthened around casinos and that the warning was received more than a month before the attacks. Police were searching for more than a dozen Egyptians and local tribesmen believed to have played a role in the attacks, senior security officials said.

Egyptian police have come up with a list of 15 names believed connected to the three bombings, including a man identified as Moussa Badran, the suicide attacker who rammed a pickup truck packed with 300 kilograms of into the reception of the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay. The officials, who declined to be identified, said the 15 people include bedouin tribesmen and Egyptians from the Sinai area, a barren peninsula covered by jagged mountains and desert ranges bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel.

Most of those on the list are believed to be at large and connected with last October's bombings of Sinai resorts farther north at Taba and Ras Shitan.

The officials said the 15 either carried out, planned or prepared the three pre-dawn attacks on the Ghazala, a nearby car park and an area popular with local Egyptians some three kilometers away called the Old Market.

The hunt for the culprits has been focusing heavily on villages and towns in the northern Sinai, where people linked to the Taba blast hailed from and thousands of potential suspects or relatives took place, angering many in the local community.

Security authorities are trying to find several Egyptian suspects who disappeared immediately after the October attacks and whose names have been mentioned in the investigations. Badran - a resident of Sheikh Zewaid, a town near Al-Arish in northern Sinai - fled his family house soon after the Taba attack, his stepmother, Mariam Hamad Salem al-Sawarka, said. Many of his relatives - including women - were arrested and tortured after he disappeared while a brother remains in custody, said Sawarka. Hours after the Sharm al-Sheikh blasts, police took DNA samples from Badran's relatives. - AP, AFP

A main suspect in Egypt resort attacks killed in shootout with police

Maggie Michael, Associated Press - August 1, 2005 EGYPT0802

CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian police cornered a main suspect in the Sharm el-Sheik bombings in his mountain hideout today and killed him in a shootout that also fatally wounded his wife, authorities said.

A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is unauthorized to speak with the press, said the couple's 4-year-old daughter also was wounded. Police hunting Mohammed Saleh Flayfil, 30, a Bedouin wanted also in last year's bomb attacks at the Taba resorts in the Sinai, discovered evidence "that elements involved in these attacks were hiding out in a quarry in Mount Ataqaa,'' 17 miles east of the Cairo-Suez highway, the Interior Ministry said.

"Approaching the area in order to cordon it off, security officers were fired upon from the location, whereupon they immediately dealt with the attack,'' the statement said.

Flayfil was killed in the exchange of fire and his wife was wounded and taken to a hospital, the ministry said.

She died of her wounds and the daughter was also wounded in the shooting, the police official said.

Flayfil was being tried in absentia for the bombings in Taba in October that killed 34 people and was a main suspects among 15 wanted in the Sharm el-Sheik attacks of July 23. The death toll in the Sharm attacks stands at 64, but hospitals say bodies still uncounted could bring it up to 88.

Two car bombs and a bomb in a knapsack ripped through a luxury hotel, a neighborhood full of Egyptians and the entrance to a beach promenade in those attacks. Investigators are focusing on the likelihood that homegrown Islamic militant cells in Sinai, possibly with international links, carried out the bombings.

Flayfil was a brother of Suleiman Flayfil, 31, one of the Taba attackers, who reportedly died in one of the explosions when he detonated his charges prematurely.

In an interview last week Flayfil's father, Sheik Ahmed Flayfil, said his sons turned their backs on him in 1995 after adopting extremist Islamic ideology.

"No power on earth was able to take the poisonous ideas out of their minds,'' Sheik Ahmed said at the interview in his home in al-Medan, six miles west of the Sinai town of el-Arish. "It was very clear that they mixed with fanatic groups in el-Arish and were affected by dangerous people to the extent that they weren't obeying me or their tribe,'' he said.

Their eldest brother, Saleh Flayfil, said they'd tried to cross into Libya, Jordan and Saudi Arabia on several occasions, but that he lost touch with them in 1996.

The family is part of the al-Sawarka tribe. The Bedouin tribe decided Monday during a gathering that it would not avenge Flayfil's killing, a decision that means the Bedouin were punishing Flayfil for deviating from the tribe.

"Since the time the two disappeared, I've been angry with them,'' Sheik Ahmed said. - startribune.com

Thousands of Saudis including myself have benefited from a free education of high-standards and were granted allowances for living, medication and travel costs. King Fahd believed that these aids would help us to fulfill our potential in education. He also assured that Saudi women are to be educated, through convincing students who study abroad to take their wives with them so that they too would have the privilege to study. Furthermore, the King allocated financial rewards for those who accompanied and studied with their husbands.

In the meantime, he ordered civil and military governmental institutions to send its employers abroad to train for certain jobs. He pushed for rapid development, transferred education and training and hence created a modern society. The majority of students returned home after studying abroad to work for and contribute to the development of their country. Furthermore, he brilliantly allocated land allotments for every graduate to build a house upon in order to encourage them to study at degree level. The truth is, King Fahd had built new cities, extended smaller cities and provided them with communication and transportation facilities even in suburban areas through a complicated and costly program. One can only understand the developmental transformation that happened if one had traveled all over the vast peninsula to observe the changes. Today, cities realize mixed populations of different regional background yet are brought together in the new modern country. This transformation entailed social, economic and political development enjoyed by all citizens. Out of the kingdom, he created a new country of a homogenous nature. This was a policy that he acquired from his late father, King Abdul Aziz, May God have mercy upon him, who not only fought alone in the battle of reconstructing Saudi Arabia, but settled the nomadic Bedouins of the country.

- Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed - the general manager of Al -Arabiya television.

Note: Saudi women still do not have the right to vote...

profile of King Fahd