Suicide attacks in Egyptian resort kill 23

DAHAB:  Suicide bombers killed 23 people including foreigners and wounded scores more when they blew themselves up in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Dahab during peak season, officials said Tuesday.   

Monday's almost simultaneous bombings, the third attack against Sinai peninsula resorts in 18 months, drew condemnation from world leaders and President Hosni Mubarak vowed to punish the perpetrators of these "heinous acts of terrorism."   

The interior ministry said 20 Egyptians and three foreigners, including a German child, were among the dead. Security officials had earlier said a Swiss national and a Russian were killed. 

The bombs hit the Ghazala supermarket and two restaurants in the busiest part of Dahab, bringing scenes of chaos to this popular destination for divers and backpackers whose name means gold in Arabic.

"There was a dead man, his brain was out, his eye was out, there were many many injuries. I sent a boy with his leg cut off to surgery in Sharm el-Sheikh. The boy was Danish," said Michael Hartlich, a German doctor who was spending a holiday in Dahab.   

"Another boy died in my arms, he had severe chest injuries. he was sitting in a Chinese restaurant, he was only 10," Hartlich told AFP, still in a state of shock several hours after the blasts. 

"It was like war," he said as he broke into tears. "I'd never seen anything like it before, a child, a baby, blood everywhere, the smell of burnt skin, of burnt hair."

Egyptian state television initially said the blasts were detonated by remote control but a security official confirmed to AFP Tuesday that suicide bombers were to blame for at least two of the explosions.   

Security experts had noted that the blasts had not caused craters in the ground and that early indications from the scene pointed to blasts carried out by suicide bombers. 

 "Around 7 pm (1600 GMT), we heard three explosions close to the seafront alongside a supermarket in the centre of Dahab," French tourist Frederic Mingeon told AFP.   

"There was a plume of smoke and people started running and screaming."   On Tuesday morning, shaken bleak-faced survivors unable to really talk could be seen sifting through the carnage. A child's bicycle lay twisted in front of the Al Capone restaurant, whose front was shattered by one of the blasts. 

 American, British, French, German, Israeli and Italian nationals were among the injured as well as Arabs, security and diplomatic sources said.

No-one immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, which came one day after a new audiotape of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden surfaced accusing the "crusaders" of the West of waging war against Islam, referring to the conflict in Darfur and the isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.   

Dahab, which is popular with Western backpackers and budget Israeli tourists, was also packed with Egyptians enjoying a public holiday.

  The bombers struck on Sham el-Nessim, a traditional holiday which marks the beginning of spring, and a day before Sinai Liberation Day which celebrates Israel's withdrawal from the peninsula in 1982.   

The resorts of Egypt's south Sinai peninsula have been repeatedly hit by Islamist militants.  Multiple bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh killed some 70 people in July 2005, the deadliest to have hit Egypt since a major wave of Islamist attacks in the mid-1990s. 

At least 34 people were killed in several simultaneous bombings in and around the resort of Taba further up the Red Sea coast near the Israeli border in October 2004.   

Four groups claimed the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings, including Al-Tawhid wal Jihad, an Islamist movement which said the attacks were revenge for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and out of allegiance to bin Laden.

US President George W. Bush branded the Dahab bombings a "heinous act".  "I assure the enemy ... we will bring them to justice for the sake of justice and humanity," he said. 

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "condemns this act of terror targeting innocent people," his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said.   

Israeli prime minister-designate Ehud Olmert sent his condolences to Mubarak and his office said the two leaders discussed "the need for cooperation between the two countries in the fight against international terrorism." 

Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported that one of the tourists caught up in the attacks was a teenager whose grandmother was killed in last week's suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, carried out by Palestinian group Islamic Jihad. 

Eighteen-year-old Gedalia Cohen had travelled to Dahab in order to get over the death of his French-Israeli grandmother Marcelle Cohen, the top-selling daily said.

Tourism is Egypt's main source of income. According to government figures, a record 8.6 million people visited the country in 2005 despite the deadly attacks in Sharm el-Sheikh.