Gathered on the seafront outside the Al Capone cafe on Tuesday, a weary looking knot of men stared silently at the 600cm-wide crater that had appeared on the cobbled street, as if willing it to disappear.
All around lay shards of glass, scraps of clothing and discarded rubber flip-flops. Splintered roof timbers hung above their heads and on the steps of the cafe, where they had eluded the hoses of the fire-fighters, were spatters of blood and small pieces of flesh.
”It was like a war,” said one of the men, Hani Bivars, unable to tear his gaze from the crater. ”I saw a child, a baby, lying on top of a young woman who had lost her right foot. I don’t know if the woman was the baby’s mother, because people had been thrown all over the street.
”There were people covered in cuts and people who had lost arms and legs. One of the waiters here was killed immediately. There were parts of bodies in the sea, and some people started to panic and ran into the waves, wading past the body parts to get away.”
Barely had the debris from that blast fallen to earth when another erupted less than 150m away, in the heart of the Mashraba district of Dahab, one of the more unassuming resorts on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. Survivors described a bright flash and a noise that resembled an earthquake as a bomb, apparently left on the ground in a bag, exploded on a small footbridge. At least three passersby died instantly and many others were maimed.
”One of the dead was an Egyptian and another looked like a tourist,” said Hany Asanaf, a hotel manager who had run into the street on hearing the first explosion. ”I don’t know where the third man was from, because his face had gone.”
Five seconds later came the third blast, in a narrow street lined with small jewellery shops. Few people were able to describe what they saw or felt: those who survived were all in hospital on Tuesday.
It was unclear whether the explosions on Monday evening were detonated by suicide bombers or with timers. The bombs were described by the Egyptian authorities as primitive, yet the toll was high: 24 dead and 85 wounded. Most of those killed were Egyptian. Three foreigners, thought to be a German boy, a Swiss diving instructor and a Russian national, also died.
Among the wounded were three Danes, two Britons, two Italians, two Germans, two French tourists, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian.
Michael Hartlich, a German doctor on holiday, described how a 10-year-old boy died in his arms. ”I’d never seen anything like it before,” he told Agence France-Presse news agency. ”A child, a baby, blood everywhere, the smell of burnt skin, of burnt hair.”
Casualties named
The British casualties were named locally as Henry Luce (42) from Devon, a cousin of Lord Luce, the lord chamberlain, and a man named as Sam Still. They were being treated at a hospital in Cairo. Luce, who has a fractured arm, said: ”All I can remember is being blown through the air.”
Lotta Ericsson (36) a Swedish diving instructor, described how she emerged from beneath the restaurant table where she had been taking cover with her husband and immediately joined others bandaging the wounds of the injured. ”A lot of people were patched up and put into cars before the ambulances arrived,” she said.
Derek Plumbly, the British ambassador to Egypt, said there had been great loss of life because the area was so popular. ”It was a crowded place, full of happy holidaymakers, the majority of them Egyptian,” he said. He declined to speculate about who could be behind the bombings, although there were immediate claims that the attack was linked to a tape recording believed to be by Osama bin Laden, issued a day earlier, which again said that western citizens would be targets of al-Qaeda. The attacks appeared consistent with the methods of al-Qaeda, but also seemed to have opened a rift between the group’s supporters and other radical Muslim groups, such as Hamas, which condemned the bombing.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair sent his condolences and said that the world needed to be ”firm, united and resolved” in its determination to stop terrorism. ”What is important is that the whole world stands united against the terrorists that want to kill innocent people and prevent countries like Egypt making the progress they and their peoples want to see.”
Third bomb attack
The attacks are the third on Egypt’s Sinai coast in less than two years. In October 2004, 34 people, including 12 Israeli tourists, died in bombings at Taba and Ras Shitan, while last July 64 people, including eight Britons, died at Sharm el-Sheikh, 96km south of Dahab.
Terrorists connected to al-Qaeda are widely believed to have been behind the previous attacks.
Much of Dahab was deserted on Tuesday, as the Bedouin tribesmen who were the only people to live here before the first tourists arrived 30 years ago made themselves scarce. The few who were on the streets said that experience had taught them to be fearful of the mass arrests which they believe will be the Egyptian authorities’ inevitable response to the attacks. Ten men were being questioned on Tuesday night, but it was unclear who they were.
Some tourists were packing up and leaving on Tuesday, almost all the Israeli visitors had gone, and long lines of cars were backed up at the police roadblocks on the outskirts of the town.
While many in Dahab and other resorts feared a slump in business, some Egyptians and tourists were resolved not to be intimidated. About 100 holidaymakers and Egyptians, including the Prime Minister, Ahmed Nazif, marched through Dahab, chanting: ”We love everyone.” Graffiti appeared on walls, in Arabic and English, declaring, Stop All War, and Peace Now.
At the edge of the crater where Hani Bivars and his friends gathered, a couple of tourists, in brightly coloured shorts and T-shirts, were videoing the hole, and the onlookers, for their holiday home movies. – Guardian Unlimited Â