TABA, 11 October 2004 — Egyptian police have rounded up some 15 Sinai Bedouins on suspicion they helped smuggle in the explosives used by the perpetrators of triple bombings which killed 34 people in Red Sea resorts frequented by Israelis, security sources said yesterday.
A source close to the investigation said a Bedouin from the Sinai Peninsula where the attacks occurred Thursday was detained on suspicion of providing the explosives for the suicide car bombing of Taba’s Hilton hotel.
Bedouins have unequalled knowledge of the barren terrain in this region and have often been involved in smuggling drugs, weapons or people across borders.
The source said another 12, most of them Bedouin tribesmen, were held in connection with the bombings, the worst attacks in Egypt since 58 foreign tourists were killed in the Nile resort of Luxor.
According to the enquiry’s preliminary findings, two suicide bombers riding in a four-wheel drive vehicle laden with about 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of TNT rammed into the Hilton where scores of Israelis were spending the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Three days after the devastating bombings which killed mostly Israelis, rescue workers equipped with shovels and jack-hammers were still digging into the pile of blood-stained debris but several told an AFP reporter there was little hope of finding survivors or more bodies.
Egypt’s Interior Ministry said late Saturday that 34 people had been killed and 105 wounded in the attacks, but the identities of many of the victims remained to be formally established. The investigation was still in its early stages as security personnel continued to collect fingerprints and DNA samples from the wreckage.
State prosecutor Hisham Badawi told the MENA news agency yesterday that a DNA test of the remains of the bombers’ bodies was under way and results would be known today.
A police source told AFP that investigators were exploring several possibilities, mainly those of an attack masterminded by Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda or by an Egyptian Islamist organization.
Israel immediately blamed Al-Qaeda for the attacks, which were reminiscent of an attack which killed 15 people — including Israelis — in the Kenyan resort of Mombasa two years ago and was carried out by the organization.
In a statement carried by the London-based Al-Hayat daily, Egypt’s main Islamist opposition movement accused Israel of being behind the bombings, arguing that its Prime Minister Ariel Sharon stood the most to gain from the attacks. The Muslim Brotherhood, officially banned but widely regarded as Egypt’s leading opposition movement, accused the Israeli intelligence services of masterminding the bombings to divert attention from the brutal massacres that the Zionist forces have been conducting in Gaza over the past 10 days.
