A group calling itself ”Brigades of the Martyrs Abdullah al-Azzam” and claiming to be part of Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility Friday for the bomb blasts targeting Israeli tourists in Egypt, in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
Meanwhile, in the devastated wing of Egypt’s Taba Hilton hotel, tourists struggled to free the bodies of two people skewered on tangled metal after a blast which killed at least 28 in the Red Sea resort popular with Israelis.
Hassan Yussef Shihab, an Egyptian guest, told on Friday how the night-time blast ripped through part of the 400-plus room hotel, bringing horror and bloodshed. More than 100 people were wounded.
Still shaken from the blast which almost threw him from his bed, Shihab said he saw the two bodies — apparently Egyptians — pinned by the metal rods as he took his wife, child and mother-in-law to safety.
Shihab, 39, went back into the building: ”Seeing 10 bodies blocking the staircase, I decided to try to get them out to the hotel entrance. They were shredded, blackened, burnt, in a terrible state.
”I took one on my shoulder. Its arm fell off,” he said, adding that on his way out, between the stairway and the hotel entrance ”I saw parts of bodies, some fingers, and a head without a body, pieces of flesh. It was horrible.”
According to the guest, the explosion occurred as many people were still eating in the restaurants, which was why there were many people on the ground floor.
Praising the hotel staff, Shihab said ”they did not lose their cool, despite the tension, and helped the guests out to the nearby beach.”
On Friday morning, uniformed Israelis were searching the debris looking for clues, according to another witness.
The hotel lies between the shores of the Red Sea and the mountains of Egypt’s Sinai peninsula, and is within easy walking distance of Israel, across the frontier.
Two more blasts struck two other resorts further down the coast. Two people were reported to have died in one of those attacks.
At the hotel, which hosted failed peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in 2001, staircases and ceilings had collapsed and huge chunks of tangled metal and concrete could be seen.
”I saw bodies thrown into the sea,” one firefighter told journalists in the early hours of Friday after helping put out the fire at the hotel, which was built by the Israelis in 1982 before Taba was handed back to Egypt. ”There was blood everywhere.”
After the explosion, hundreds of Israelis streamed towards the Taba border crossing just a few hundred metres from the hotel, while ambulances ferried the wounded to hospitals in the Israeli resort of Eilat.
According to Israeli army radio, Egyptian soldiers and customs officials took fright at the tide of people and fired into the air to prevent them trying to cross the border without showing their passports.
”We felt the explosion behind us. It was as if the world had exploded. The smoke was incredibly thick,” said Mili Ayari, 28, from Tel Aviv, as she lay on a stretcher at Eilat’s Yosseftal hospital.
Aya Reich, 28, was slightly wounded in the leg in the blast.
”I will never go back to Egypt,” she said, although adding that she had ”nothing against the Egyptians”.
At the hospital forecourt, ambulances were unloading the wounded, among them young children.
Meanwhile Israel Radio has reported that two car engines were found near the Taba Hilton hotel, suggesting that car bombs were used in the attack. A suspicion that a suicide bomber was also involved was being investigated.
Officials involved in the rescue efforts said 38 people were still missing. – Sapa-AFP