CAIRO: Egypt has beefed up security, especially in tourist areas, after Algeria and Morocco were rocked by a string of suicide bomb attacks, a security source said Sunday.
The source said that Interior Minister Habib Al-Adly had instructed his top aides on Saturday to accurately carry out security plans and to secure tourist areas. Intense security efforts are underway to abort any potential extremist hotbeds, and attempts by organizations to revive their activities, the source quoted the minister as saying. According to our security assessment, a wave of terrorist attacks is expected in the region, and our security measures are concentrating on this, Al-Adly said.
A spate of bombings in the region, claimed by an Al-Qaeda group, has sparked fears of increased militant strikes across North Africa.
Five suicide bombers have killed themselves in the Moroccan port city of Casablanca in five days. In Algiers, 33 people were killed after a string of coordinated suicide bomb attacks.
Egypt was itself a target of deadly attacks in the Sinai Peninsula between 2004 and 2006.
At least 34 people were killed in triple bombings in and around the resort of Taba on Egypt s Red Sea coast near the Israeli border in October, 2004.
Egypt said a group calling itself Al-Tawhid wal Jihad carried out the attacks, and was also responsible for the July 2005 bombings in Sharm El-Sheikh which killed about 70 people, and a triple suicide attack in April 2006 which killed 20 people in Sinai s popular Dahab resort.
