Interior Minister Habib el-Adly put the death toll at 23, including 20
Egyptians and three foreigners. But Sinai hospital officials said Tuesday that
an Egyptian man had died of his wounds, bringing the toll to 24. More than 60
people were wounded, including many Westerners.
One of the dead was a German child, according to the Egyptian Interior
Ministry and the German Foreign Ministry. Police said one Russian and one Swiss
were also killed, but el-Adly would not confirm those nationalities.
At least three Israelis were hurt in the attack, which sent a steady stream
of cars back to Israel some 65 miles to the north. Israeli authorities said
1,800 of their citizens were in the Sinai at the time, far fewer than during
last week's Passover holiday.
Israel's ambassador in Cairo, Shalom Cohen, said the Israeli government had
warned repeatedly against visiting the Sinai. "Unfortunately, the warnings came
true," he told Israel's Channel 10 TV.
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-run Palestinian Cabinet, called the
bombings a "criminal attack which is against all human values. We denounce the
attack, which harmed the Egyptian national security." By contrast, Hamas had
refused to condemn last week's bombing that killed nine people in an Israeli
fast-food restaurant.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose economy is heavily dependent on
tourism, called the blasts a "sinful terrorist action."
President Bush also condemned the attacks. "Today we saw again that the
terrorists are willing to try to define the world the way they want to see it,"
he said in Las Vegas. The European Union condemned the bombings as "despicable"
and leaders across Europe said they were standing with the Egyptian government
against terrorist attacks.
Terrorist attacks have killed nearly 100 people at several tourist resorts in
the Sinai Peninsula in the past two years — all timed to coincide with major
holidays in Egypt.
Bombings in the resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, near the Israeli border,
killed 34 people in October 2004, a day before a holiday marking the start of
the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Suicide attackers killed 64 people — mainly tourists
— in an attack on the resort of Sharm el-Sheik last July. It happened on the day
Egyptians commemorate the 1952 revolution overthrowing the king.
The Egyptian government has said the militants who carried out the previous
bombings were locals without international connections, but other security
agencies have said they suspect al-Qaida.
El-Adly said it wasn't immediately clear if Monday's attack could have been
carried out by a group as organized as those who detonated the earlier bombs.
"The devices used were not of the types which would have caused big
destruction," he said.
In Jerusalem, Brig. Gen. Elkana Har Nof, an official at the Israel prime
minister's counterterrorism department, told Israel Radio that the Sinai coast
is likely to continue being targeted, in part because it is a key link in
Egypt's economy.
"The coast combines all the elements that are a target, especially for global
jihad," he said.