At least 83 people were killed and 200 injured when car bombs ripped through shopping and hotel areas in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik in the worst attack in Egypt since 1981.
Shaken European tourists spoke of mass panic and hysteria as people fled the carnage early on Saturday, with bodies strewn across the roads, people screaming and sirens wailing.
Terrified European and Arab tourists fled into the night, and rescue workers said the death toll was almost certain to rise.
An Egyptian security official told the AP news agency the dead included British, Russian, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis and Qataris.
Two Britons were among 83 people confirmed dead in the bombings in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik, said Dr Saeed Abdel Fattah, manager of the Sharm el-Sheik International Hospital. It was not clear if they were the 14-year-old girl and the 30-year-old man who British embassy officials earlier said were in a critical condition, or the two British men who were missing.
Two car bombs, possibly suicide attackers, went off simultaneously at 1.15am local time (11.15pm BST) about 4km apart. A third bomb, believed hidden in a sack, detonated around the same time near a beachside walkway where tourists often stroll at night.
Several hours after the attack, a group citing ties to al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the explosion on an Islamist website. The group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al-Qaeda in Syria and Egypt, was one of two extremist groups that also claimed responsibility for October bombings at the Egyptian resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan that killed 34. The group also claimed responsbility for a Cairo bombing in late April.
The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified.
But a top Egyptian official said there are some indications the latest bombings were linked to last autumn’s Taba explosions. ”We have some clues, especially about the car that was exploded in the Old Market, and investigators are pursuing,” said the interior minister, Habib al-Adli.
He called it ”an ugly act of terrorism.”
Neighbouring Jordan said it was immediately tightening security at its tourist sites.
The death toll was likely to rise, rescue workers said. The lobby of the 176-room Ghazala Gardens hotel in Sharm’s Naamah Bay, the main strip of hotels, collapsed into a pancaked pile of concrete. Rescue workers feared more victims were still buried under the rubble.
David Stewart, a tourist from Liverpool, was staying with his wife and two teenaged daughters at the Ghazala Gardens when the explosion hit. The windows of his room were smashed, and he and his family ran.
”Somebody shouted, ‘Keep moving!”’ he told AP. ”The lights were out. I couldn’t tell what was happening.”
His family, and many others, fled toward the back of the hotel to take refuge in a grassy lawn near the pool. There, hundreds spent the night, some lying on pool mattresses.
On the other side of Sharm in the Old Market, a second car bomb in a minibus parking lot sent a ball of flaming wreckage shooting over a nearby beach and into the sea and littered the sand with body parts. Overturned chairs, broken water pipes and pools of blood were scattered around the ravaged coffee shop nearby, frequented by Egyptians who work in the resorts.
”The country’s going to come to a stop. That’s it!” sobbed Samir al-Mitwalli, who arrived in Sharm only a month ago to work as a driver. ”Who’s paying the price? … Whoever did this wants to destroy the economy.”
The string of attacks stunned a town that has long been dedicated to scuba diving at the famed coral reefs off its shores and partying on the beaches.
Sharm el-Sheik has expanded at a furious pace in recent years, making it a major player in Egypt’s vital tourism industry, drawing Europeans, Israelis and Arabs from oil-producing Gulf nations.
The prime minister, Tony Blair, spent new year there last year and President Hosni Mubarak has a residence at the resort, where he spends the winter, and the town has been the host to multiple summits for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The attacks last year in Taba ended a long period of peace. The last major attack was in 1997, when Islamic militants killed 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians at the Pharaonic Temple of Hatshepsut outside Luxor in southern Egypt. Today’s violence was the deadliest since Islamic militant attacks began in Egypt in 1992.
There were signs that the bombings were by suicide attackers. Witnesses in the blast that hit the coffee shop reported the attack vehicle was moving when it blew up, and the governor of South Sinai, Mustafa Afifi, said the car in the Ghazala attack broke through security into the front driveway of the hotel before exploding.
The attack that so far appeared to have killed the most foreign tourists was a bomb hidden in a sack that went off by the beach-side pedestrian walkway, killing six foreigners and an Egyptian, said a security official in Sharm.
But most of the damage was caused by the two car bombs, which sent flames and palls of smoke over Sharm and shook windows as far as a mile away.
The blast swept through the interior of the sprawling, low-built Ghazala hotel, shattering windows and shredding metal. Blood splattered some of the walls, and tree limbs from its gardens were strewn everywhere.
The blast at Old Market tore through a coffee shop on the side of the minibus lot, killing at least 17 Eygptians who were sitting there, said a security official in the operations control room in Cairo monitoring the crisis.
More than eight hours later, the overturned shell of a minibus was still smouldering near a large crater in the asphalt. Witnesses said the minibus was driving nearby when the explosives-laden vehicle swept into the lot, and the minibus driver tried to swerve to avoid the blast. The square’s clock was stopped at the time of the explosion.
”This flaming mass flew over my head, faster than a torpedo, and plunged into the water,” said Mursi Gaber, who at the time of the blast was putting up decorations on a nearby beach. ”There were body parts all over the steps down to the beach.”
The British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, condemned the ”evil people” who carried out the Sharm El Sheikh bombings. – Guardian Unlimited Â