CAIRO, 15 August 2005 — Egyptian security forces have arrested three suspected members of a cell involved in the July bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh that killed at least 88 people, the Al-Ahram daily said yesterday. The semi-official newspaper said security forces were searching for others who assisted or helped plan the three attacks on July 23.

“Police raided some of the hide-outs and they found, in a farm in El-Arish (north Sinai), about a ton of high explosives and are comparing it to the substances used in the three attacks,” the newspaper reported without giving a source. Interior Minister Habib El-Adli said yesterday that security forces had uncovered details about the Sharm El-Sheikh attack, identifying perpetrators and arresting the main suspects, the official MENA news agency reported. He did not give details.

Al-Ahram said one of three arrested was working as a guard in a farm owned by a Palestinian living in El-Arish. His arrest led to the other two being detained, it said. Authorities suspect the Sharm El-Sheikh attacks and bombings last October in and around Taba, another Sinai resort town, were all the work of a group of Bedouin based in northern Sinai.

Hundreds of people were detained for questioning in the El-Arish area after the Taba attack. Al-Ahram said that security officials traced what it described as a “terrorist cell” by following tracks of two vehicles carrying explosives from central Sinai to Sharm El-Sheikh. It said three members of the cell died at the sites of the Sharm blasts. After the explosions, it had not been immediately clear if some perpetrators had escaped.

The first cell member blew himself up in a suicide attack when he rammed the Ghazala Gardens hotel in a pickup truck and a second died in a pickup in a market street, Al-Ahram said. A third was killed when he blew up a bag near a taxi rank, it said. Hide-outs related to the suspects were investigated in the areas of El-Arish and Al-Qantara, both in north Sinai, where weapons and explosives were seized, the newspaper said.

On Friday, two police were wounded in Sinai in a clash with a group suspected of involvement in the attacks. Officials said at the time one man from the group of about 15 was arrested, as well as a woman believed to be the wife of another member.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in the trial of two Egyptians charged over deadly bombings in Sinai resorts last year yesterday dismissed allegations by the defendants that they had been tortured. The prosecution produced a medical report during the session rebuffing claims that police tortured defendants Mohammed Gaiez Al-Sabah Mohammed Rubaa Addallah in order to extract confessions. “The report found that the police had nothing to do with the injuries on the bodies of the defendants,” a prosecutor told the high state security court hearing the case.

It added that the report concluded that “the injuries were normal and not the result of torture.” The accused men had alleged last month that police tortured them to force them to confess to carrying out the bombings that killed 34 people at the Hilton Hotel in Taba and two other Sinai resorts on Oct. 7, 2004.

Defense lawyer Said Fathi questioned the veracity of the report and asked the presiding judge to allow him to study it. The defendants are charged with “premeditated murder, failure to surrender themselves, determination to assassinate Israeli tourists ... terrorism and resisting the authorities during arrests.” A third suspect, Mohammed Ahmed Salah Felifel, was killed by police at the beginning of the month.