CAIRO, 4 June 2006 — Egyptian police killed three men wanted for involvement in bombings that killed 20 people in the Sinai resort of Dahab in April, an Interior Ministry statement carried by the state MENA news agency said yesterday. The men died in a gunfight after police laid siege to their hide-out on the outskirts of El-Arish in northern Sinai, the statement said, adding that a fourth brother had died during the Dahab blasts.
Two of the men, Atwan Al-Swerki and Radi Al-Swerki were the brothers of Atallah Al-Swerki who is believed to have carried out the Dahab attacks, a source said. The third man to die has not yet been identified.
The three had been hiding in farms in northern Sinai when police got a tip-off and surrounded the area for hours. “(The suspects) started to shoot, and police returned fire killing all three instantly,” the source said. The deaths take the total number of Dahab suspects killed by police on the hunt for fugitives to 10, according to previous Interior Ministry statements.
Authorities have blamed a group of Sinai Bedouins with Islamist views, named by Egypt as Tawhid wal Jihad (One God and Jihad), for a series of bomb attacks in the region. The group has never issued a statement or claimed responsibility for attacks.
Earlier Friday, security forces arrested two men wanted in connection with Sinai attacks, the official MENA news agency reported Friday. A third man gave himself up voluntarily, as the search for suspects in the peninsula continued.
Security forces arrested Mohammed Hadi Salim Abu Qabal and Yusef Mohammed Hamad Hussein in North Sinai, MENA said. Twenty people were killed, including several foreigners, on April 24, when three suicide bombings ripped through the popular Red Sea resort of Dahab during a peak holiday season.
Meanwhile, MENA also said that Israelis dragged the bodies of two Egyptian policemen onto Israeli territory after shooting them on the Egyptian side of the border.
The report was issued a day ahead of a key meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, at which the Friday deaths of the policemen is now likely to be a major issue. The agency reported that an initial probe into the deaths of Mohammed Badawi Mohammed Sadiq and Ayman Al-Said Hamid showed Israeli soldiers shot and killed them on Egyptian soil.
“They died on the Egyptian side close to the Israeli border and the Israeli side hauled the bodies so as to claim that they died on Israeli soil,” the agency said, quoting a security source.
