DAHAB, Egypt: Three nearly simultaneous bombings hit this Egyptian beach resort popular with foreigners, killing at least 24 people on streets filled with vacationers and Egyptians enjoying a long weekend marking a national holiday.
The early evening bombings in the Sinai seaside city of Dahab blew out storefronts along a crowded promenade of shops, restaurants and bars. Hours after the bombings, shards of glass lay in piles along with white tiles stained with bloody footprints.
Interior Minister Habib El-Adly said those killed were 20 Egyptians and three foreigners. More than 60 people were wounded, including many westerners.
Hospital officials in Sinai said Tuesday that an Egyptian man had died of his wounds, bringing the death toll to 24.
The explosions came a day after Osama bin Laden issued a call to arms to Muslims to support Al-Qaeda in fighting what he calls a war against Islam.
The bombings, the third terror strike on a Sinai resort in less than two years, hit Dahab at 7:15 pm when the streets were jammed with tourists strolling, shopping or looking for a restaurant or bar for evening festivities by the tranquil waters of the Gulf of Aqaba. There were just three loud bangs and people rushing around, British tourist Paul McBeath told Sky News. Everybody is shaken.
Another witness said the Al Capone restaurant, one of the area s most popular spots, was destroyed.
The tables and chairs have gone, there is nothing left, Joseph Nazir, who owns a safari company in Dahab, told Britain s Press Association. Everybody is panicking, a lot of people are crying. We will be affected by this for a long, long time.
Hani Sadeq, 24, who worked at the Mona Lisa jewelry store, said, I thought the power generator had blown up. We ran toward the scene and we found people, our friends, lying on the ground. Some were already dead.
Some were alive, with arms broken. We took them to the hospital. We want to know why this did happen; I wish we knew who did it. If I saw him, I would tear him apart. Looking up at a shrapnel-scarred hotel, Sadeq said: Dahab is dead now.
Ahmed Al-Tabakh, 23, who works at a nearby store, said the bombs struck Dahab s main Mazbat Street. This street is the life of Dahab. This is the street that attracts tourists, he said.
Hotels and guesthouses were filled with foreigners and with Egyptians celebrating the long Coptic Christian Easter weekend that coincided this year with Shem Al-Nessim, the ancient holiday marking the first day of spring.
The attacks came a day before Sinai Liberation Day, a national holiday marking the return of the peninsula to Egypt from Israel as a result of the 1979 peace treaty.
For years, Dahab was a popular, low-key haven for young Western and Israeli backpackers drawn by prime scuba diving and cheap hotels, which mainly consisted of huts set up along the beach. In recent years, a number of more upscale hotels have been built, including a five-star Hilton resort.
At least three Israelis were hurt in the attack, which sent a steady stream of cars back to Israel some 100 km (65 miles) to the north. Israeli authorities said 1,800 of their citizens were in the Sinai at the time of the blasts. However, there were far fewer Israelis vacationing in Sinai than during last week s Passover holiday.
President Hosni Mubarak, whose economy is heavily dependent on tourism, called the blasts a sinful terrorist action.
U.S. President George W. Bush also condemned the attacks. Today we saw again that the terrorists are willing to try to define the world the way they want to see it, Bush said in Las Vegas.
The Interior Ministry said the wounded were 42 Egyptians and 17 foreigners, including three Americans, while police put the number of wounded at more than 150.
The discrepancy could not be immediately explained. An interior ministry official who refused to be identified because he is not authorized to speak to the media said Italians, French, Danes, Britons, Germans and at least one Australian were among the injured.
The official said a German child was among the dead.
Police said one Russian and one Swiss were also killed but El-Adly would not confirm those nationalities.
Terrorist attacks have killed nearly 100 people at several tourist resorts in the Sinai Peninsula in the past two years and each timed to coincide with a major holiday in Egypt.
Bombings in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, near the Israeli border, killed 34 people in October 2004, a day before a holiday marking the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Suicide attackers killed 64 people, mainly tourists, in an attack on the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh last July. It happened on the day Egyptians commemorate the 1952 revolution overthrowing the king.
The Egyptian government has said the militants who carried out the bombings were locals without international connections, but other security agencies have said they suspect Al-Qaeda.El-Adly said it wasn t immediately clear if Monday s attack could have been carried out by a group as organized as those who detonated the earlier bombs in the other resort towns.
The devices used were not of the types which would have caused big destruction, he said. It is clear from examination and the marks left as a result of the explosion, that they were mild marks which reflect the type of the explosive devices.
Officials in the United States have not ruled out Al-Qaeda involvement, but have no evidence showing that is the case, the official said. Nor do they have any evidence that bin Laden s tape was linked to the attack.
Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert, said Egypt was one of the most proficient Middle Eastern countries in dealing with terrorist groups, so this attack showed how adept and innovative these groups are.
It may be that the Sinai Peninsula is (Egypt s) Achilles Heel. They ve gone up and down the coast and hit the main tourist resorts, Hoffman said. In his taped warning Sunday, bin Laden accused the United States and Europe of supporting a Zionist war on Islam by cutting off funds to the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-run Palestinian Cabinet, condemned Monday s bombings as a criminal attack which is against all human values. We denounce the attack, which harmed the Egyptian national security. By contrast, Hamas had refused to condemn last week s bombing that killed nine people in an Israeli fast-food restaurant.
After Monday s attack, Egyptian television footage showed body parts scattered on the streets, bloodstained pavement and destroyed shops littered with broken glass. Jamie Gibbs, a Briton, told Sky News that the streets of Dahab were chaotic after the bombings so he and a friend walked back to their rooms along the beach.
We met a couple of Egyptians we know, and one was crying. He had lost one of his friends, he died, Gibbs said. And everyone is very upset because of their livelihoods. If the tourists stop coming they re going to be poorer than they already are. AP
