Sinai blasts: At least 30 dead

2004-10-08 06:53

Eilat, Israel - Suspected car bombs ripped through beach resorts packed with Israeli tourists on the Red Sea coast of Egypt's Sinai desert late on Thursday, killing at least 30 people and causing carnage and chaos.

"We know dozens of Israelis have been killed," an Israeli police source said after a massive explosion devastated the vast Hilton hotel in Taba at the main border crossing point between Egypt and Israel.

Egyptian Tourism Minister Ahmed al-Maghrabi put the toll at more than 30 dead and 100 wounded from the three explosions in Taba and two other resorts on the south Sinai coast.

The explosions occurred as Israelis were celebrating the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, and followed intelligence warnings that Israelis should keep out of the Sinai because of possible attacks.

Ambulances were shuttling across the border checkpoint between Taba and the Israeli resort of Eilat, where hospital staff wheeled in bloodied victims, including children, on stretchers.

"There was a terrible explosion. In a matter of seconds everything had collapsed, it was awful," said Liron, a 24-year-old Israeli woman.

"I saw bodies thrown into the sea," one firefighter told journalists after helping put out the fire at the Israeli-built hotel. "There was bloody everywhere."

Powerful car bomb

Israeli police said the explosion was caused by a powerful car bomb detonated near the entrance to the four-star Hilton, destroying a wing of the building.

South Sinai governor General Mustafa Afifi said two charred trucks were found at the Shitani and Ras Soltan camps on the coast road south of Taba, indicating that the blasts were also caused by car bombs.

Egypt threw up a security cordon around the blast sites in the Sinai - renowned for its dramatic desert mountains and palm-fringed beaches - and boosted airport security in Cairo.

A previously unknown Islamist group claimed responsibility for the Hilton blast in a telephone call to AFP in Jerusalem.

"Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) claims responsibility for the explosion at the Taba hotel, carried out in revenge for the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq," the caller said.

The explosions came amid a massive Israeli army offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip, a wedge of land near the border with Egypt, that has left 93 Palestinians dead in less than 10 days.

Resorts dotted along the Sinai's desert coast have remained popular holiday spots for Israelis since the territory was handed back to Egypt as part of a 1979 peace deal, the first between Israel and an Arab country.

- AFP