'QAEDA' BOMBS JEWS IN EGYPT
By URI DAN and ANDY GELLER
October 8, 2004 -- Terrorist car-bombs ripped through three Egyptian resorts filled with Israelis last night, killing up to 35 people and injuring 160 in attacks that bore all the hallmarks of al Qaeda.
The blasts were the deadliest to target Israelis since 1978.
In the worst of the attacks, a massive explosion ripped off the front of the luxury high-rise Hilton Hotel in the Sinai town of Taba, just a few hundred yards from the Israeli border.
The 410-room hotel, a popular venue for Middle East peace negotiations, was filled with 700 Israelis celebrating the final day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.
Pandemonium erupted as the blast — which was felt a mile away — catapulted bodies across the huge lobby, which has a bar, a casino and huge plate-glass windows looking out on a saltwater pool nestled by the Red Sea.
Ten floors of the hotel came down, trapping dozens of terrified guests in the rubble.
"The whole front of the hotel has collapsed. There are dozens of people on the floor, lots of blood. It is very tense," said witness Yigal Vakni.
"I am standing outside of the hotel. The whole thing is burning, and they have nothing to put it out with," he said.
Two hours later, car bombs struck the Sinai resorts of Nueiba and Ras al-Sultan, about 35 miles southwest of Taba.
"There were very strong explosions," said eyewitness Roni Goserski. "There were huge mushroom clouds."
Israel's Deputy Defense Minister Zeev Boim said the attacks appeared to be the work of "international terror groups like al Qaeda or branches of it."
"It is not the kind of attack that we know comes from Palestinian terror organizations," he said.
A senior Israeli security source said, "The multiple attacks have the hallmarks of al Qaeda."
Two previously unknown groups claimed responsibility.
Tawhid Islamic Brigades published a claim of responsibility on an Islamic Web site that has been used frequently for such claims from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
And Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya, or World Islamist Group, called the Agence France-Presse news agency in Jerusalem to say it had carried out the attacks.
There no way to confirm the authenticity of the claims.
Israeli and several Egyptian officials said at least 30 people were killed in Taba and five others in Nueiba and Ras al-Sultan. In all, 160 people were injured.
An Egyptian Interior Ministry spokesman told Reuters the death toll was 12, but The Associated Press said that referred only to the number of Egyptians killed.
The deadliest attack to target Israelis occurred in March 1978, when 43 people were killed in a terrorist shooting on a Tel Aviv beach.
Yesterday's explosions came a month after the Israeli government urged citizens not to visit Egypt, citing a "concrete" terror threat to tourists in an area.
The warning, issued on Sept. 9 by the counterterrorism center in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, identified the Sinai peninsula as the target of a potential attack.
Nevertheless, 12,000 to 15,000 Israelis flocked to the Sinai for the weeklong harvest festival of Sukkot.
Egyptian government spokesman Magdy Rady tied the blasts to the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians in the neighboring Gaza Strip, where 84 people have been killed since Sept. 29.
"I think the explosions are very related to what is going on in Gaza," Rady said.
The security adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub, insisted no Palestinian faction was responsible for the explosions.
"We understand the sensitivity of moving the battle with the Israelis outside the Palestinian territories," he said. "I am assuring that there is no relationship between any Palestinian factions and the explosions in Egypt."
Adi Kassem, an Israeli-Arab doctor who was vacationing at the hotel and was watching television on the sixth floor at the time of the blast, treated patients by the side of the swimming pool, using the light of his mobile phone to see.
The doctor said the worked alone for about 15 minutes, triaging the wounded, until other doctors, Israeli and Egyptian, came to help.
At first, Egyptians did not allow Israeli rescuers to enter the country, but later relented after Sharon instructed his diplomats to contact the Egyptians and expedite the crossing.
The two countries signed a peace treaty in 1979, but relations have been chilly in recent years amid the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Taba is the main crossing between Israel and Egypt and the gateway for thousands of Israelis who travel to the hotels and resorts on the Red Sea.
Egyptians also were in the midst of a long holiday weekend marking the anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, so popular resort towns along the Sinai coast were packed. With Post Wire Services
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