Posted on 10/07/2004 5:49:49 PM PDT by SJackson
A CAR bomb that ripped through a hotel on the Red Sea coast of Egypt's Sinai desert early today was one of three explosions targeting tourists, killing at least 35 people dead and wounding scores more.
The deadly blast at the Hilton hotel in Egypt's Red Sea resort of Taba on the border with Israel was claimed by the previously unknown "World Islamist Group", in a telephone call to AFP in Jerusalem.
"Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) claims responsibility for the explosion at the Taba hotel, carried out in revenge for the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq," the caller said.
"Jamaa will carry out a series of martyr operations (suicide attacks) during the month of Ramadan to avenge these martyrs," he said.
The holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan begins in mid-October.
Israeli public television, citing a police source, said a car bomb detonated close to the entrance of the Hilton Hotel, destroying a large part of the building.
Shortly after, another two explosions rocked tourist camps at Shitani and Ras Soltan, which lie on the coast road of the desert peninsula to the south of Taba.
An Egyptian police source said the three explosions killed at least 35 people and left another 125 wounded. Earlier reports said at least 23 Israelis were killed in the Hilton blast.
The explosions occurred as Israelis were celebrating the end of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, and followed warnings from the country's intelligence services that Israelis should keep out of the Sinai desert.
"From the first information that we have received it could have been a car bomb attack," a senior Israeli foreign ministry official said.
Hospital sources said the casualties were of different nationalities.
"I am standing in front of the hotel. I heard a big explosion about 30 minutes ago that smashed all the windows. The power went off," a witness who gave his name as Eitan told Israeli radio.
Egyptian public television had said earlier that the Hilton blast was caused by a gas leak.
The explosions came amid a massive Israeli army offensive in the north of the Gaza Strip, a wedge of land near the border with Egypt, that has left 93 Palestinians dead in less than 10 days.
Ambulances were seen shuttling across the border checkpoint between Taba and the Israeli resort of Eilat, where hospital staff wheeled bloodied victims on stretchers.
Resorts dotted along the Sinai's desert coast have remained popular holiday spots for Israelis since the territory was handed back to Egypt as part of a 1979 peace deal, the first between Israel and an Arab country.
But Taba was excluded from Israel's 1982 handover of the Sinai and was only returned in 1989 after years of wranging following a ruling by the International Court of Justice.
Ties between the two neighbours have soured since the Palestinian intifada or uprising against Israeli occupation began four years ago.
But thousands of Israeli tourists are still drawn to the Sinai, especially for its outstanding Red Sea diving and its hotel casinos, banned in the Jewish state.
The Jerusalem Post reported on September 11, after the government travel advisory, that holidaying Israelis were continuing to flock to the Sinai, despite repeated and increasingly dire official warnings of attacks.
"Because nothing has happened since previous warnings were issued, the public seems to be treating advisories from counter-terrorism experts and the foreign ministry as akin to the boy who cried wolf," the paper said.
It estimated that over the past summer alone, around 300,000 Israelis took holidays in Sinai, thus replacing Turkey as Israelis' most popular tourist destination.
Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's Shin Beth domestic security agency, told the cabinet on September 19 that prompt action had thwarted a plot by Palestinian militants to strike Israeli tourists in the Sinai.
Mr Dichter said that the attack had been planned by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to coincide with the Jewish new year holidays between September 15 and 18.
If we get what we deserve, God help us.
And that is the real answer.
Sadly, your words are so true.
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