In one of the bloodiest attacks yet on a top international tourist destination, three bombs exploded almost simultaneously in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh early on Saturday morning. At least 88 people were killed and up to 200 were injured after the series of blasts brought carnage to Egypt’s most popular resort.
First reports said two Britons had died, but on Saturday night the British ambassador, Derek Plumbly, said: ”We now believe there could be a number of British dead. We are unable to confirm names or to give firm figures.”
The devastation also wounded up to eight Britons, including a girl of 14 and a 30-year-old man, who were airlifted to a military hospital in Cairo in a critical condition.
Two car bombs, each packed with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, were both detonated at 1.15am local time, possibly by suicide bombers. The first slammed into the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in the town’s Namma Bay area. The second exploded in the city’s Old Market area, frequented mainly by Egyptians working in the resorts. The lobby of the Ghazala collapsed in a pile of rubble and the market attack tore through a coffee shop. A third bomb believed to be hidden in a sack went off at a popular beachside walkway around the same time.
Shocked tourists spoke of the panic as sirens wailed and people fled screaming from hotel rooms and cafes amid mayhem, with bodies strewn across the roads, beaches and coffee bars, Egyptian security forces made 34 arrests just hours after the triple attack.
Dr Ahmed Barakat, the region’s top medical officer, said 12 people were critically ill out of the 98 in the international hospital.
There were conflicting claims of responsibility, from the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, a group linked to al-Qaeda, and the previously unknown Holy Warriors of Egypt, who named five people they said were the bombers.
Of the known dead, 76 were Egyptian. Other nationalities among the fatalities included Germans, Czechs, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis and Qataris. An Italian victim has been named as Sebastiano Conti (34) a TV cameraman who had been on his honeymoon.
About 9 000 British tourists were staying in the area this weekend, and on Saturday night Red Cross counsellors and British Foreign Office officials were flying out to help with those who wanted to return home.
Amid London’s heightened security alert and exactly a week after British holidaymaker Helyn Bennett (21) was one of five tourists killed by a a suicide bomber in Turkey, British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent a message of sympathy to his Egyptian counterpart and was being kept in touch with events at his country home, Chequers.
Blair has taken several family holidays in Sharm el-Sheikh, which attracts tens of thousands of tourists from all over Europe and the Arab world.
On Saturday many of them were flying home. ”I had just turned off the TV shortly after 1am when there was this massive hell of an explosion. I thought a plane had crashed,” said Leon Reynolds (32) of London, sitting with his girlfriend and their suitcases in the lobby of the two-storey Movenpick hotel on Saturday night.
Their travel agent had promised them a flight home. ”I went out on the balcony and saw a huge plume of smoke. We cowered in the bathroom.” Their hotel is opposite the entrance to the Ghazala, which took the full impact of the car bomb.
Gavin Evans (27) of Derby was also in the Movenpick with his girlfriend. They heard the bang but couldn’t open the door. The frame had buckled and the lock jammed. ”We smashed the window and went out on to the lawn. We were due to stay another week but we’re leaving now.”
The bomb went off between the Tiran tourist shopping centre and the Old Market, a complex of cafes, restaurants, and grocery shops. Soldiers kept gawpers away from a two-metre deep crater in the middle of the road, cordoned off by yellow tape, apparently the site of the epicentre of the explosion.
The area has become a ghoulish attraction for those tourists who are staying on as couples in shorts strolled past the burnt out cars, taking pictures with their cellphones. There were clues that the bombings were suicide attacks as witnesses at the coffee shop reported a vehicle was moving when it blew up, and the governor of South Sinai, Mustafa Afifi, said the car at the Ghazala broke through security into the driveway before exploding.
Although the British Foreign Office has updated its travel advice for Britons to include details of the bombing, it is not advising against travelling to the Red Sea and said the overall level of warning had not changed.
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said there may be a terror threat in Egypt but that was also true across Europe and in the UK: ”We are asking other countries not to say ‘Don’t travel to the United Kingdom’.”
Sorrow and anger
The White House joined the rest of the world on Saturday in condemning the ”barbaric” bomb attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh.
From Washington to Tokyo and from London to Addis Ababa, expressions of outrage at the ”evil” bombers flooded in after the attacks.
United States President George Bush ”condemns in the strongest possible terms the barbaric terrorist attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh,” said a White House statement, calling the blasts an ”assault on the civilised world”.
Within hours United Nations chief Kofi Annan expressed his ”sorrow and anger” at the bombings.
”Once again, in this tragic month, he condemns the use of terror and indiscriminate violence against civilians, which no cause or belief can possibly justify,” said a UN spokesperson.
In Europe, from where tens of thousands tourists travel to Egypt, the attacks only added to a sense of crisis triggered by the July 7 London bombings and follow-up attacks this week.
Jack Straw said he could not rule out links to the London attacks.
”Almost certainly they are evil people who will claim wrongly to have done this in the name of Islam,” he said.
In Paris, French President Chirac stressed the world’s ”absolute determination to fight this scourge,” while German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer denounced the ”blind and fanatical hatred” of the terrorists.
Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin called on countries which have suffered such attacks to stand united against terrorism, saying that could be the only response to ”this barbaric threat”.
In Rome Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi called the attacks ”tragic,” Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said they were ”barbaric,” while EU commission chief Jose Manuel Barroso described them as ”cowardly”.
Pope Benedict XVI said he was deeply saddened by these ”senseless acts”.
In Asia — which has been under the spectre of terrorism since the October 2002 Bali bombings — the story was the same.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, whose country has come under pressure to clamp down on militants following the London blasts, voiced his ”determination to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations”.
In Toyko a foreign ministry official said the Japanese government was ”gravely shocked” by the attacks, while Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi condemned the Egyptian bombings but warned that such attacks would continue unless the root causes of terrorism were understood.
”We just can’t get these people to stop. They’ll keep on doing it. We can condemn, we can say all we like, but we must be ready to sit down and to talk and discuss why this is happening,” he said.
In Beijing, Chinese President Hu Jintao condemned the bombings, adding: ”The Chinese government is firmly against any sort of terrorism and will join hands with the international community … in the fight against terrorism.”
In Muslim-majority Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Morshed Khan said the bombers had nothing to do with the Islamic faith. ”We should identify them as [the] enemy of Islam,” he said.
In Addis Ababa, the African Union (AU) condemned the attacks on a resort ”known by all to be a symbol of peace and dialogue”.
Closer to Egypt itself, Israel offered to send army rescue teams to the Red Sea resort on the tip of the Sinai peninsula to help emergency crews deal with the carnage, which it described as ”inhuman acts of terrorism”.
The Turkish foreign ministry called the attacks ”abominable,” adding: ”We see the attacks as yet another treacherous act which underlines the need for the international community to lead an all-out fight against terrorism.”
Iran — long criticised by the United States in particular for sponsoring Islamist terrorism — said it firmly condemned the bombings but called on the United States to change tack in its ”war on terror”.
”We appeal to Western countries not to impose restrictions on Muslims as these attacks have nothing to do with Muslims and placing restrictions on Muslims is the best way of helping the terrorists,” said the foreign ministry.
Even bomb-weary Iraq condemned the bombings. ”We wish the Egyptian armed forces success in fighting the cancer of terrorism which threatens the peace of the entire world,” said Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari in Baghdad.
Visiting the bomb sites, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he would push forward with the ”battle against terror” and not ”give in to blackmail”.
”This cowardly and criminal act which is aimed at destabilising Egypt will reinforce our determination to press the battle against terror through to its eradication,” he said. – Sapa-AFP, Guardian Unlimited Â