CAIRO: An Egyptian was killed Sunday in clashes that broke out when police raided northern Sinai to hunt down the group responsible for the deadly bombings in Dahab, the interior ministry said.
The armed clashes erupted at dawn in the Jabal Al-Maghara region in northern Sinai as police encircled an area where they believed suspects were holed up, the interior ministry said in a statement.
One of the suspects was killed, the statement said. Two security officials also told AFP that several suspects were detained in the raid.
The Jabal Maghara area is close to Sheikh Zuayed, which is one of the main towns in northern Sinai and the home of at least one of the suicide bombers, the sources said.
Newspapers said one of the bombers, Atallah Al-Swerki, concealed the explosives under a load of fruit on a pick-up van which he used to reach the southern Sinai diving resort last Monday.
Ibrahim, the brother of terrorist Atallah Al-Swerki, was arrested by the security services in northern Sinai, the state-owned Al-Gomhuriya daily said. He helped his brother take the explosives towards Dahab, before heading back to the Sheikh Zuayed area, the newspaper added, quoting security sources. The driver of the vehicle was also arrested and questioned as part of the investigation, the official news agency MENA reported.
Interior Minister Habib Al-Adly had said that the same north Sinai group was responsible for the Dahab bombings and two other failed suicide attacks on security personnel further north on Wednesday.
Egyptian and foreign fatalities have been recorded, which are said to include two Russians, a German child, a Swiss national, a Yemeni and a Hungarian.
The attacks, the third such bombings on the same tourist-packed coastline in 18 months, also left 58 Egyptians and 32 foreigners wounded.
Both previous spates of attacks were followed by major raids in the Sinai, a vast desert and mountainous expanse mainly inhabited by Bedouin tribes.
Intense fighting between police forces and armed Bedouins took place in Jabal Halal, near Jabal Al-Maghara, in the aftermath of the Sharm El-Sheikh attacks.
Several suspects and special police forces were killed in the raids, during which thousands of Bedouins were rounded up. AFP
