Sinai bombs 'isolated' attacks

2004-10-09 22:01

Cairo - The Sinai resort bombings were Egypt's first major terrorist attacks since the 1997 Luxor massacre by radical Islamists, but government officials and analysts said on Saturday they probably don't signal a resumption of militant activity in Egypt, which has shown zero tolerance for Muslim extremists.

Egyptian terrorism experts believe Thursday's car bomb attacks on the Taba Hilton and two beachside camps farther south were isolated events carried out by foreign terrorists, most likely linked to al-Qaeda.

They said Egyptian Islamists, thousands of whom were jailed, killed or forced underground in the secular government's crackdown on militant groups in the 1980s and 90s, have neither the means nor the inclination to launch a wave of attacks inside the country.

Leaders of the country's largest group, Al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, announced a unilateral ceasefire in 1997. The Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which counted al-Qaeda deputy Ayman al-Zawahri as one of its leaders, has disbanded.

Kamal Habib, a former member of Islamic Jihad who was jailed from 1981 to 1991, said it is highly unlikely that any Egyptian Islamic group was responsible for the bombings.

He said Islamic militants no longer feel the deep animosity they had in past decades. Militants assassinated President Anwar Sadat in 1981 after he forged close ties to the United States and made Egypt the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel.

"The Islamists don't consider the Egyptian regime as an enemy anymore," Habib told The Associated Press.

Three claims of responsibility for the Sinai attacks have surfaced from little-known groups, but there was no evidence any of them was authentic.

Mohamed Salah, an expert on Egyptian militants and the Cairo chief of the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, believed the attack was an isolated strike by an organization like al-Qaeda, not the start of a pattern by a local group.

"It is very difficult for there to be more attacks in Egypt because there is no base for militant groups here anymore," Salah said.

Future attacks 'unlikely'

"This operation is just like the (1998 US Embassy) attacks by al-Qaeda in Kenya and Tanzania, and the group has proved in the past that it is able to smuggle explosives into a country and to give them to people."

Government spokesperson Magdy Rady also raised doubts about the likelihood of future attacks, believing the bombings targeted Israelis because of their country's military campaign against Palestinian militants just across the border from the Sinai.

"I don't think there will be a return to regular attacks being launched in Egypt because this one was an individual event and related ... to its proximity to Israel," he said.

The one analyst was said the attack could be the first in a series was Montasser el-Zayat, a lawyer who defends Islamic radicals.

He said it was possible that young Egyptians enraged by Israeli attacks against Palestinians and influenced by al-Qaeda's strategies carried out the bombings.

El-Zayat, jailed for three years alongside al-Zawahri, said the Sinai attacks might lead to "a beginning of a series of operations by young Egyptians to plan attacks either here or elsewhere in the Arab world".

- AP