Taba: 'Terrorists came by boat'
2004-10-10 13:14
Taba - Israeli rescue workers wound down their search on Sunday for victims of a luxury hotel bombing, cutting through debris with their Egyptian counterparts in a dusty hole that was a basement shopping area.
Later on Sunday, the Israelis rescue and recovery teams expected to finish their work and return to Israel. At least 34 people were killed in the Taba blast and two smaller car bomb explosions Thursday night at Sinai tourist resorts.
"We are at the last stage of recovery," said Gideon Baron, head of the Israeli rescue and recovery effort. No bodies had been found since Saturday night, but Baron would not say if more were believed buried.
While the Egyptian-Israeli rescue and recovery effort wound down, the investigation was moving ahead.
On Saturday, investigators lifted fingerprints, swabbed dust and collected tissue from the sites of three car bombings and detained dozens of Bedouin tribesmen, including quarry workers who could have provided the explosives.
Egyptian investigators said they suspect a group of eight to 10 terrorists targeting Israelis carried out the Thursday night attacks, possibly slipping in from Saudi Arabia or Jordan on speed boats.
Al-Qaeda blamed
Israel has blamed al-Qaeda for the attacks. The Egyptian investigators are leaning toward an al-Qaeda connection as well, saying a local sleeper cell may have been awakened to carry out the attacks, Egypt's first terrorist strike in seven years.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said such a group would almost certainly be linked to Ayman al-Zawahri, who led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad before merging his group with al-Qaeda in 1998. The Egypt-born Zawahri is now bin Laden's top deputy.
Three car bombs exploded Thursday night, one at the Taba Hilton just south of the Egypt-Israel border and two at a town of beach bungalows, Ras Shitan, 55km to the south on the Red Sea coast.
Two Egyptian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said at least one woman saw two men in the car believed used in the Taba attack before it exploded and was able to provide detailed descriptions.
"It was dark and she could not give 100% details, but the information she gave is good and provided some clues about how it all happened," one official said.
One of the officials said investigators were leaning toward the foreigners' scenario because of the sophistication of the attacks, describing a home-grown scenario as a 10-15% possibility. The other said it could have been planned abroad and had some Egyptian involvement.
Israeli officials said they believed al-Qaeda was behind the attack.
"The type, the planning, the scope, the simultaneous attacks in a number of places, all this points to al-Qaeda," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalon told Channel 2. US officials share the suspicion.
- AP