Multiple bombings hit Egyptian resort
CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - As many as seven explosions, including at least four car bombs, struck Egypt's Red Sea resort Sham el-Sheik early Saturday, hitting several hotels packed with European and Egyptian tourists and killing at least 45 people in the deadliest attack in Egypt in nearly a decade, witnesses and police said.
Saturday's explosions in quick succession starting at 1:15 a.m. local time shook windows two kilometres away. Smoke and fire rose from Nam Bay, a main strip of beach hotels in the desert city at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, also popular with Israeli tourists, witnesses said.
Dazed tourists milled about the darkened streets as Egyptian rescuers searched for dead and injured and ambulances sped away with victims.
"There seemed to be a lot of bodies strewn across the road" near one cafe, British policeman Chris Reynolds, visiting from Birmingham, England, told the BBC by telephone.
"It was horrendous."
At least four car bombs were used in the attack, said a security official in the operations control room in Cairo monitoring the crisis. One went off in the driveway of the Ghazala Gardens hotel, a 176-room four-star resort on the main strip of hotels in Naama Bay, said the governor of South Sinai province, Mustafa Afifi.
The Ghazala was "completely burned down, destroyed," Amal Mustafa, 28, an Egyptian who was visiting Sharm with her family, said after driving by the site.
Footage of the hotel, a three-storey complex, showed parts of the building burned out with walls collapsed.
Another car bomb exploded in the Old Market, an area a few kilometres away, killing 17 people - believed to be Egyptians - sitting at a nearby outdoor coffee shop, the control room official said. Three minibuses were set ablaze, though it was not clear if they were carrying passengers, the official said.
Another blast went off near the Movenpick Hotel, said a receptionist there who declined to identify himself.
Security officials put the toll at 45 killed and around 200 wounded. The Interior Ministry put out a statement putting the toll at 31 people and 107 wounded.
The dead in the Sharm blasts included British, Russian, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis, Qataris and Egyptians, a security official said. The officials, including the one in the control crisis, were speaking on condition of anonymity.
In Ottawa, Foreign Affairs spo
kesman Reynald Doiron said embassy staff in Cairo were checking for Canadian casualties.
It was the deadliest attack in Egypt in nearly a decade. In October 2004, a series of explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai resorts Taba and Ras Shitan, about 160 kilometres northwest along the Gulf of Aqaba coast, killing 34 people. Egyptian authorities said that attack was linked to Israeli-Palestinian violence and launched a large wave of arrests in Sinai.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has a residence in Sharm el-Sheik, at a resort several kilometres outside Naama Bay and often spends weeks there at a time in the winter. But during the summer, he stays at a residence in the northern city Alexandria.
A London police officer, Charlie Ives, who was on holiday, told BBC Television that he was in a street cafe about 50 metres away from where two explosions went off.
"It was mass hysteria really. We tried to calm people down," he said.
He said the blast was so strong, "we were virtually thrown from the cafe."
Another British tourist, Fabio Basone, was in Naama Bay's Hard Rock Cafe when he heard a small explosion, then a larger one that sparked "mass panic with people running and screaming in all directions."
"We went outside on to the street where we were met with hundreds of people running and screaming in all directions," he told BBC.
"I saw the front of a hotel had been blown away...There were two bodies on the floor but I don't know if they were dead."
Scores of ambulances from cities in the northern Sinai and the Suez Canal cities Suez and Ismailiya were headed to Sharm to help with casualties.
Khaled Sakran, a resident, said he saw one explosion from the Old Market.
"I saw the saw the fire in the sky," he said.
"Right after, I saw a light in the sky and heard another explosion, coming from Naama Bay."
"The blast shook my house, I can see the fire and lots of smoke," Akram al-Sherif, a Jordanian who was staying at a summer house about two kilometres away, said.
Thousands of tourists are drawn to Sharm for its sun, clear blue water and coral reefs. It also has been a meeting place where world leaders have tried to hammer out a Mideast peace agreement. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met there in February and agreed to a ceasefire.
Is it just me, or has the world gone completely nuts?
