45 dead in multiple Sinai explosions

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     the associated press, THE JERUSALEM POST  Jul. 23, 2005

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As many as seven explosions, including at least four car bombs, struck Egypt's Red
Sea resort of Sharm e-Sheikh 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 started at 1:15 a.m. and came in quick succession. Windows were
shaken a mile away. Smoke and fire rose from Naama Bay, a main strip of beach hotels
in the desert city at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, witnesses said. The
area is also popular with Israeli tourists.

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," 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 that was 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-story complex, showed parts of the building burned out with walls
collapsed.

Another car bomb exploded in the Old Market, an area a few kilometers 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.

Another blast went off near the Movenpick Hotel, according to 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 with the death toll holding at 31 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 because they were giving
information not yet included in the official statement.

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 of Taba and Ras Shitan, about 100
miles 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.

President Hosni Mubarak has a residence in Sharm el-Sheik, at a resort several
kilometers outside Naama Bay, and often lives there for weeks at a time in the
winter. During the summer, he stays at a residence in the northern city of
Alexandria.

A London police officer, Charlie Ives, who was on holiday, told BBC Television that
he was in a street cafe about 50 meters 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 the 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 of
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
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," said Akram
al-Sherif, a Jordanian who was staying at a summer house less than a mile away.

Thousands of tourists are drawn to Sharm for its sun, clear blue water, and coral
reefs.

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