SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, 26 July 2005 — Egypt said yesterday it was looking for six Pakistani men suspected of having links to Saturday’s multiple explosions in this Red Sea resort.
Investigators have sent photographs of the six to police stations in Sinai and checkpoints on the road to Cairo. Police named five of them as Mohammad Anwar, 30, Rashid Ali, 26, Mohammad Akhtar, 30, Tasadduq Hussein, 18, and Mohammad Arif, 36.
“The six Pakistanis were staying at a hotel in Maadi called Cairo Tel and their passports were fake... They arrived in Sharm El-Sheikh almost on the same day of the arrival of two pickup trucks that were used in the bombings, which is July 5,” said an official connected with the probe.
“We think that one of the Pakistanis was killed in the attacks. But we can confirm that only after we are done with the DNA tests,” he added.
Khaled Arafa, an Interior Ministry official, said investigators were trying to find out if there was a link between the Pakistanis and the attacks. “At the moment we are still investigating if they have a direct or an indirect link to the bombings but we don’t think that they carried out the attacks themselves because the explosive materials were smuggled through Taba mountains and only Bedouins know these areas quite well,” Arafa told Arab News.
An official at the Pakistan Embassy in Cairo said his embassy was in contact with Egyptian authorities over the issue of the missing Pakistanis.
“But they have not officially informed us that the Pakistanis are suspected of involvement in the bombing. They are only saying: ‘We are searching for them. We cannot trace them,’” said Khalid Ahmed, a counselor at the Pakistani mission.
“It is very difficult for us to confirm whether any Pakistani was in Sharm El-Sheikh but it is possible that someone may have been there. I have a strong belief that Pakistanis cannot be involved in terrorism here.”
Many Pakistanis use Egypt as a route to travel to Europe to find jobs, he said. Last week, police arrested between 40 and 45 Pakistanis in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria for being illegal immigrants.
Early yesterday morning, police fought a gunbattle with Bedouin gunmen in mountains some 30 km from here. It came after security forces surrounded the nearby villages of Khurum and Rweissat in overnight raids, police said.
“Two Pakistanis had been staying there and we suspect the bombs were assembled in this area,” an intelligence source said.
Authorities said police had been able to track the course of two vehicles used in the attacks and that the suspected bombers came over the mountains from the northern hamlet of Ras Sidr, on the west coast of the Sinai Peninsula, posing as quarry workers.
Pictures of more than 30 other suspects were also distributed, mostly Egyptians but including some internationally wanted terror suspects.
At least 130 people have been arrested in a police dragnet as part of the massive search for the perpetrators of the attack on a hotel, a market and a parking lot that came on the heels of deadly bombings in London.
The government announced yesterday the removal of the heads of security in North and South Sinai provinces, Maj. Gen. Mohieddin El-Gammal and Lt. Gen. Hamdi Ghali, respectively.
Maj. Gen. Osama El-Morasi — an official from the State Security Service, which deals with cases of national security and terrorism — was named to the post in South Sinai, which includes Sharm. Maj. Gen. Essam Abdel-Halim El-Sheikh was named chief of security for northern Sinai, the ministry announced.
— Additional input from agencies
