Al-Qaeda claims Egypt blasts
2005-07-23 15:38
Dubai - An Al-Qaeda-linked group claimed Saturday's deadly bombings in a Egyptian resort as Osama bin Laden's network further spread its tentacles with strikes on London, threats to European nations and kidnappings in Iraq.
The group, calling itself the Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Levant and Egypt, claimed in an Internet statement the bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh that killed at least 83 people, including foreigners.
"This operation came as part of the response against the global evil powers which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and Chechnya," it said in an Islamic website statement, whose authenticity could not be verified.
"The mujahedeen... have dealt a devastating blow to the Crusaders and the Zionists and the infidel Egyptian regime in Sharm al-Sheikh."
The multiple bombs blew up at the Ghazala Gardens hotel in Naama Bay, a nearby carpark and the old market of Sharm el-Sheikh which the statement said was "crowded with Zionist invaders and Crusaders".
"We want to say out loud that we are not afraid of the executioner's sword in Egypt and we will not be forgiving to those who harm our brothers in the heroic Sinai," it said.
"We swear that we will avenge the martyrs of Sinai who were killed by the Egyptian tyrant."
The statement, made in the name of the "Brigades of the Martyred Abdallah Azzam," was referring to suspects detained by Egyptian authorities after deadly anti-Israeli bombings on October 7 in the resort of Taba, also in the Sinai.
Azzam, a Palestinian Islamist killed in Afghanistan in 1989, was the original organiser of foreign Muslim volunteeers fighting the Soviet invasion before the Saudi-born bin Laden.
The defence lawyer of a number of Taba suspects said an Egyptian court had requested that a doctor examine his clients to determine whether they had been tortured by the security services.
The Taba blasts, which killed 34 people and wounded 100 others, were then claimed by several groups, inclding a group named "Brigades of the Martyred Abdallah Azzam."
Loyalists of Al-Qaeda's Iraq frontman, Jordanian fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, later claimed in another statement the kidnapping of Algeria's top envoy in Baghdad on Thursday.
Zarqawi's group accused Algeria of bowing to US "orders" by dispatching an envoy to Iraq after its militants announced the killing of Egypt's envoy and the injury of a Bahraini diplomat in a kidnapping attempt in Baghdad.