JEDDAH, 24 July 2005 — The news that Sharm El-Sheikh, the tourist resort at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, had been bombed revived the horror of random mass bombings for Saudi citizens yesterday.

Abdullah Al-Toemi, an avid scuba diver was in Sharm El-Sheikh last week. Yesterday he was dismayed at the needless loss of life and destruction. “I couldn’t believe it. I was in Sharm recently and still have plans to go back there again within the next two months.

“We cannot all put our lives on hold because of what these terrorists are doing. By changing the way we live our lives, we are allowing them to win. What these terrorists want is to scare people away, and I won’t have it,” Al-Toemi said.

However, not everyone is as resilient as Al-Toemi. Tour and travel operators spent a major part of their day yesterday canceling reservations made by Saudis to Sharm El-Sheikh.

Nasser Al-Tayyar, chairman of the Al-Tayyar Travel Group, said the spate of bombings in London, Egypt and Lebanon had created an air of anxiety and uncertainty in the travel market for those countries. “We don’t know what is going on there. Every day we wake up to hear some bad news on the travel front.”

Fahd, a tour manager at Zahid Travel, told Arab News that he had spent a good part of the day canceling reservation as call after call came in from worried travelers wishing to either postpone or entirely cancel their vacation plans there.

“In my estimate, every single Sharm El-Sheikh holiday I have booked for this week has been canceled. My phone has been ringing constantly, not only with cancellations, but with calls from Saudis in Sharm El-Sheikh who are trying to return home,” he said.

According to Fahd, the limited flights out of Sharm El-Sheikh have been booked solid.

“Many travelers are being routed through Cairo, but there still remains the problem that there are insufficient number flights out of Sharm El-Sheikh to Cairo, or anywhere else for that matter. At the moment, unless special additional flights are added by the airlines, the earliest I can get anyone out of there is next Wednesday,” he said.

Al-Amin Mahmoud, who was supposed to travel to Sharm El-Sheikh next week, said that his mother forced him to cancel his plans.

“I planned for this trip for many months. I bought a good package from a travel agency and I was supposed to stay there for 5 days starting next week. After everything was in place and I was getting set to go in a few days, I received a phone call at 2:30 am this morning from my mother to tell me about the explosion. I tried to calm her down but she kept on asking me to promise that I would not go.

“Despite my promises to her, she arrived in Jeddah from Madinah in the afternoon and took my passport away from me. What can I say, my plans have been ruined. So I guess I will spend my vacation in the Kingdom this year.”

Habib A., who also had Sharm El-Sheikh travel plans scheduled for August said he changed his mind and would head to Dubai instead. He told Arab News: “Dubai is very hot in the summer. I wanted to go to Sharm because of the nice weather, but because of the explosion, I probably won’t go anywhere near Egypt for the next two years. When I saw how big the explosion was, I became terrified and I kept thinking, what if I was there. I heard about the innocent victims that were killed in the explosion. I could not stop asking myself what if I was one of them, how would my family feel? I am telling you this is terrible.”

One Saudi family already in Sharm El-Sheikh have resigned themselves to the fact that they will face enormous difficulty in booking themselves on a homebound flight and have decided to stay. When Arab News attempted to reach them a second time, the family had already gone for their swim.

A Saudi would-be traveler to Sharm El-Sheikh who went to collect his ticket at a travel agency yesterday in Riyadh was left wondering where to go after he had cut short his London holiday because of attacks there, only to learn that the Egyptian resort had also been struck by bombings. “Tell me, where shall we go? Wherever we go, the bombers are trailing us,” the man said.

The man, a civil servant in his 60s, said he and his family had returned from Britain to Syria with the intention of proceeding to Lebanon after the deadly July 7 attacks in the British capital. But then he decided that Lebanon, where a series of blasts took place — most recently on Friday — was unsafe, and booked himself and his family for Sharm El-Sheikh.

“Go to Malaysia,” a favorite destination for Saudis, suggested the travel agent, adding, however, that there were no plane seats currently available. “I fear a volcano will erupt if I go there,” the would-be tourist said.

In the end, he decided to cancel his booking to Sharm El-Sheik and wait and see if spaces opened up for Malaysia. “He now jokes that he might cancel everything and just go to Abha, which the government is trying to turn into a major tourist destination for locals,” the travel agent said.

Attacks Condemned

Dr. Ibrahim ibn Hamad Al-Quayid, an elected member of the Riyadh Municipal Council, strongly condemned the horrific carnage committed by the suicide car bombers in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm Al-Sheikh and extended his condolences to the people and the government of Egypt.

“It is a savage act, which is against the teachings of Islam,” said Dr. Al-Quayid, who previously worked as an assistant secretary-general of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY).

“The kind of horrific attacks that happened yesterday must be condemned by all individuals and civilized societies across the world,” he said, adding that the deadly attacks were a “terrible crime” committed by the enemies of peace and humanity. “The aim is to destabilize the Arab region in particular and the whole world in general,” he said. “These attacks and atrocities on innocent people will not serve any interest.”

Dr. Mohsin Shaikh Al-Hassan, CEO of a leading Riyadh-based public relations company, said: “I am extremely shocked to hear about the attacks, but I am sure that those who have committed this crime are not Muslims, rather they are maligning the image of Islam.

“They are criminals and they are fighting for no goal, only to destroy the beautiful resort city, which generates $6 billion for the Egyptian economy annually and provides employment to over 200,000 Egyptian men and women,” said the PR chief.

“The Sharm-Al-Sheikh bombings are very disturbing, but they were expected as I remember an Egyptian official saying after the Khan Al-Khalili bombings that they were facing uncertain times because of the new generation of radicals that the Egyptian government is not familiar with,” said Adel Al-Toraifi, a Saudi analyst and writer based in Riyadh.

“The bombings will probably not stop in the Middle East until the region wakes up and realizes the danger of terrorism, instead of Arab states plotting against each other,” explained Toraifi. “We haven’t reached a mature understanding of terrorism in the Middle East. We need to create a community rejection of terrorism, but I don’t see this happening for another 2 to 3 years.”

“It is a tragic moment for Egypt and Egyptian people and we stand together to face this challenge,” said Maher Abbas, an Egyptian journalist working in Riyadh.

He said that the bombings in Egypt probably indicated that a certain group is against the pro-Western policies of the Egyptian government. But, these attacks should not be seen as isolated. Abbas said that no country, either in Europe or in Middle East, was safe.

— Javid Hassan, M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan and Rasheed Abou-Alsamh contributed to this report.