CAIRO: State-owned newspapers on Tuesday linked the deadly blasts which rocked the Red Sea resort of Dahab with previous Islamist attacks in the Sinai. The preliminary findings of the investigation show a possible link between these attacks and those in Taba and Sharm El-Sheikh, the top-selling Al Ahram daily said. According to the interior ministry, 24 people were killed in the three almost simultaneous explosions that ripped through a busy neighborhood of Dahab late Monday. The Egyptian judiciary recently announced that an Islamist group calling itself Tawhid wal Jihad was responsible for the multiple bombings on Sharm El-Sheikh in July 2005 and other Red Sea resorts further north in October 2004. Thirteen new suspects appeared before the attorney general in March as part of the trial of a group accused of perpetrating the October 2004 attacks which left at least 34 people dead. Three terrorists from the group that carried out the previous bombings – Nasr Khamis al-Milahi, Eid Salama Al-Tarawi and Mohammed Abdallah Abu Girgir – all members of Tawhid wal Jihad, confessed during interrogation that they were planning to hit other tourist targets in south Sinai, Al Ahram said. This could be a reaction to what is happening in Iraq and in the Palestinian territories, the newspaper said. The Tawhid wal Jihad group, which perpetrated the Sharm El-Sheikh attacks, is responsible for this heinous crime, the state-controlled Al Gomhuriya daily said Tuesday. A group calling itself Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and Holy War) was among a number of organizations which claimed the October 2004 attacks as well as those in Sharm El-Sheikh that killed another more than 60 people. Both attacks were followed by huge crackdowns in the Sinai Peninsula, a desert area close to Israel, the Gaza Strip, Jordan and Saudi Arabia that is generally considered Egypt s Achilles heel in terms of security. AFP
Press links Dahab blasts to other Islamist attacks
