CAIRO, 28 April 2006 — Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak yesterday vowed to win the war against terrorism.
“Egypt’s security and the safety of its people is a red line no one can cross,” Mubarak said in a televised speech. “We will surround it, pull it out by the roots and dry up its sources. We will respond with the power of the law to any attempts to cause chaos, and Egypt will remain secure for all Egyptians.”
Mubarak called on religious figures to spread a message of forgiveness, one that denounces extremism and violence.
Apparently referring to recent violence between Egypt’s Muslim majority and Christian minority, Mubarak also lambasted the “forces of extremism and fanaticism,” saying they were trying to “tear at the united fabric of the Egyptian society.”
Mubarak’s speech comes days after the recent terrorist bombings in Sinai. Late Monday evening, the south Sinai resort town of Dahab was the scene of a coordinated triple bombing that left at least 18 people dead and over 70 injured. Early Wednesday morning, peacekeepers and Egyptian security officials in north Sinai were attacked on two separate occasions by bombers, but the only casualties were the assailants themselves.
Interior Minister Habib El-Adly has drawn parallels between the recent attacks and the ones that took place in July 2005 in Sharm El-Sheikh. “The information we have indicates that (the perpetrators) are Sinai Bedouin, and the latest operations are linked to the previous attacks,” El-Adly told state television.
Investigators are running DNA tests on three bodies recovered from the Dahab scene to determine whether they were suicide bombers, or whether the blasts were caused by rigged explosives, security officials said.
Egyptian security forces arrested late Wednesday night the Cairo bureau chief of Al-Jazeera satellite channel, Hussein Abdel Ghani, on the grounds of “disseminating false news reports, making announcements of a provocative nature, misguiding public opinion, and disturbing the peace.”
According to the Interior Ministry, the arrest came in response to the false report broadcasted Wednesday by Al-Jazeera of the so-called third terrorist attack in Belbeis. Abdel Ghani described his arrest as “a complete police kidnapping operation — beyond the law.”
Egyptian TV, in a bid to maintain calm and safeguard the tourism sector from further blows, denied any such attack in Belbeis. Historically, terrorist attacks have had disastrous consequences for tourism specifically, but also on the national economy indirectly. Over one million are employed in the Egyptian tourism industry.
Employees in the tourist sector are hopeful that despite the attacks business remains close to normal. “I’ve only had two early checkouts and no room cancellations so far,” said Ashraf Sayed, manager of Ganet Sinai Hotel, a budget resort in Dahab.
The area’s hotel occupancy rate remained high at around 80 percent on average. TUIGN and Thomas Cook, two of Europe’s biggest tour operators, reported only a minor number of cancellations. The British government has also avoided issuing a travel advisory for its citizens against traveling to Egypt.
