Israeli holiday makers walk along the road after crossing from Taba, Egypt, into the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat Friday Oct. 8, 2004. Thirty-eight Israelis are missing after three explosions at Egyptian resorts in the Sinai Peninsula, a senior army official said Friday. Rescue workers know of 19 bodies, including at least seven that are still under the rubble of the Taba Hilton, near the Israeli border.
Debka:
October: Friday, October 8, on the morning after an terrorist bombing rampage at three idyllic Sinai desert resorts – with two dozen known dead and scores still missing – the first clues have been found to the identities of the hands behind the massacre and their targets. DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counter-terror sources report that the explosives used to tear away the entire frontage of the Taba Hilton and hit the Nueiba oasis campside further south on the Red Sea coast were of Iranian manufacture; the same make as the bombs used in the 1996 Khobar Towers blast and he 2003 Istanbul attacks.
Egyptian intelligence investigators are working on the same premise as their Israeli counterparts that a Hizballah cell based in Sinai rigged the four bomb cars and by mid-September had them ready for Thursday’s multiple strike. Two were reserved for the 10-storey Taba Hilton, where bodies are still being dug out of the rubble.
Intelligence of suggestive Hizballah movements prompted the counter-terror center at the Israeli prime minister’s office to warn Israeli travelers on the eve of the Jewish New Year to miss out on their favorite holiday sites in Sinai. Nonetheless, 15,000 Israelis were trapped there Thursday night.
(The Hizballah’s Sinai cell is part of the Palestinian international weapons smuggling network that has grown out of the Sinai-Gaza tunnel system and which now branches out to East Africa, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, Syria, Turkey and Chechnya.)
Two of the four bomb cars have been identified as “Ramses,” an Egyptian version of the Fiat. They were kept hidden in caves and wadis around the Sinai desert in waiting for the suicide bombers. Another Egyptian intelligence premise is that between 4 and 6 bombers activated the death cars, arriving one or two days earlier by one of two routes - from Sudan or from Saudi Arabia via Sudan. They would have reached the Egyptian Red Sea port of Gardaka and taken a regular ferry to Sharm el-Sheikh. Disembarking passengers are only lightly searched as Egypt has no wish to hurt its tourist trade. The other possibility is that the bombers crossed the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and arrived at the Sharm el-Sheikh marina aboard a Saudi yacht, knowing the Egyptians would never search it.
A few hours later, they would have been picked up and driven to the hidden bomb cars by Hizballah operatives.
Friday's Casualty Figures.
Updated interim casualty figures from terrorist attacks on three Sinai resorts Thursday night: Total number of dead estimated at 28 including 14 Israelis and 6 Egyptians. Others will be identified by DNA testing. Six bodies transferred to Israel thus far. Of the 142 known Israeli wounded, 126 were taken to Eilat hospital and 16 to Beersheba. Six thousand Israeli trippers are still in Sinai of the 15,000 at the time of the attacks. No contact has been established with 250. At the ravaged 10-storey Taba Hilton, 70 Israeli rescue teams with heavy equipment are burrowing in the rubble for survivors alongside Egyptian teams. Altogether 200 Israeli aid and rescue personnel operating now in Sinai.
Part II coming soon.