AL-ARISH, Egypt: Police killed Tuesday the leader of an Islamist militant group blamed for a spate of attacks in tourist resorts in the Sinai Peninsula over the past 18 months, security sources said. Nasser Khamis Al-Mallahi, the mastermind of the group, was killed this morning in clashes between police and members of the group, a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity. He was responsible for the attacks in Dahab and oversaw the whole operation, said the official, referring to triple suicide bombings that killed 19 people, including foreigners, in a popular Sinai resort on April 24. The shootout took place in Jabal Arish in North Sinai after police surrounded the area. Mallahi was shot dead and his right-hand man Mohammed Abdullah Elian was arrested, the official said.
This is a major blow to the terrorist group, commander of North Sinai security police, Lt. Gen. Essam El-Sheikh said. Hundreds of security officers were seen celebrating the success in front of the security police headquarters later Tuesday, chanting Allahu Akbar, or God is Great. El-Sheikh said security forces surrounded the olive grove in the El-Karama district, south of El-Arish, after receiving a tip that El-Mallahi and his accomplice were hiding there. Bedouin scouts had also reported that tracks of two suspects led into the grove.
Police found automatic rifles and hand-grenades that failed to detonate
Both men, whose names appear on a list of 25 wanted suspects issued by Sinai police, belong to the Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and Holy War) group said to be responsible for attacks on Sinai s tourist packed Red Sea coast. Mallahi, a 30-year-old father of two, took over the leadership of the Islamist group after its previous leader Khaled Mussaed was killed by police in 2005, security sources said. Israel s counter-terrorism unit on Monday advised all nationals visiting the Sinai Peninsula to immediately leave the neighboring Egyptian territory citing concrete threats to kidnap Israelis. No Israelis were killed in the Dahab attacks, which saw three suicide bombers blow themselves up in one of the busiest areas of the popular diving resort. The bombings, which also left some 90 people wounded, were followed two days later by two failed suicide attacks targeting security personnel further north in the peninsula. There was no claim of responsibility but security officials have said they suspect the same group of being responsible for all the attacks in Sinai over the past two years. Multiple bombings in Sharm El-Sheikh killed more than 60 people in July 2005, the deadliest attack to have hit Egypt since a major wave of Islamist violence in the mid-1990s. At least 34 people were also killed in bombings in and around the resort of Taba further up the Red Sea coast near the Israeli border in October 2004. Egypt had first announced in March that that Tawhid wal Jihad, which pledges allegiance to Osama bin Laden s Al-Qaeda network, was responsible for the Sinai attacks. The Islamist group had claimed the Sharm El-Sheikh bombing, saying that the attacks were revenge for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Egyptian police on Sunday said they were awaiting DNA test results to identify at least two suspects believed to have carried out the Dahab attacks. Security forces have been sweeping Sinai, a vast mountainous area inhabited mainly by Bedouins, to hunt for suspects connected to the Dahab attacks. Agencies
