CAIRO: The death toll from the recent bombings in the Red Sea resort of Dahab has risen to 20 after an Egyptian died of his injuries, a security official told AFP Wednesday. Mohammed Farag Menufi Abdallah, the owner of a travel company in Dahab, was wounded in one of the three suicide attacks that rocked the resort on April 24 and died in a Cairo hospital on Tuesday, the official said. His death brings to 20 the number of people killed in the attacks, not counting the three bombers. Among the victims were 14 Egyptians and six foreigners – two Russians, a German child, a Swiss, a Yemeni and a Hungarian. Around 90 people were wounded. Egypt blamed the attacks on an Islamic radical group, Tawhid wal Jihad, also responsible for other bloody bombings in Red Sea resorts over the past 18 months. On Tuesday, security forces who have been sweeping the mountainous area of Sinai for suspects killed the leader of the Islamist group, describing him as the mastermind of the Dahab attacks.
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. Agencies
