Egypt hotel bomb inquiry focuses on Bedouin smugglers

TABA, Egypt – Egyptian police have rounded up some 15 Sinai Bedouin on suspicion they helped smuggle in the explosives used to kill at least 33 people at Red Sea resorts frequented by Israelis, security sources said yesterday.

Investigators doubt the explosives reached the Taba area along main roads or through the Israeli-Egyptian border post at Taba because of the tight security, they said. The Bedouin nomads know the unpatrolled desert tracks of the Sinai well.At the main bombing site, the Hilton hotel in the resort of Taba on the Israeli border, search and rescue teams said they expected to complete their task on Sunday without finding any more bodies under the concrete blown off the hotel’s facade when one or two vehicle bombs exploded there on Thursday evening.”We are almost finished searching the damaged areas and we can we can almost say that there are no people left,” said Amos Peleg, the official in charge of the heavy equipment for the Israeli search and rescue team.Another Israeli official, Gideon Bar-on, said the death toll from the bombings at Taba and at a resort further south on the coast of the Sinai peninsula stood at 33, unchanged from Saturday.Israeli officials say they have identified six of the victims as Israelis and six as Egyptians.The Egyptian Interior Ministry said yesterday there were 34 bodies — nine Egyptians, five Israelis and 20 unidentified.The Egyptian presidential spokesman said on Saturday that Egypt was keeping an open mind on who carried out the attack, the most serious on tourists in Egypt since 1997.Israel says it suspects the al Qaeda organisation but Egyptian officials have indicated they suspect a link with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The Egyptian security sources said it was too early to say whether the bombers were Egyptians or foreigners and for the moment they are concentrating their efforts on identifying the vehicles and the source of the explosives.The international news channel CNN quoting Egyptian officials said yesterday that bombers could have reached the Egyptian coast by speedboat from nearby Jordan or Saudi Arabia.An Interior Ministry official said he had no information about that theory.- Nampa-ReutersThe Bedouin nomads know the unpatrolled desert tracks of the Sinai well.At the main bombing site, the Hilton hotel in the resort of Taba on the Israeli border, search and rescue teams said they expected to complete their task on Sunday without finding any more bodies under the concrete blown off the hotel’s facade when one or two vehicle bombs exploded there on Thursday evening.”We are almost finished searching the damaged areas and we can we can almost say that there are no people left,” said Amos Peleg, the official in charge of the heavy equipment for the Israeli search and rescue team.Another Israeli official, Gideon Bar-on, said the death toll from the bombings at Taba and at a resort further south on the coast of the Sinai peninsula stood at 33, unchanged from Saturday.Israeli officials say they have identified six of the victims as Israelis and six as Egyptians.The Egyptian Interior Ministry said yesterday there were 34 bodies — nine Egyptians, five Israelis and 20 unidentified.The Egyptian presidential spokesman said on Saturday that Egypt was keeping an open mind on who carried out the attack, the most serious on tourists in Egypt since 1997.Israel says it suspects the al Qaeda organisation but Egyptian officials have indicated they suspect a link with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.The Egyptian security sources said it was too early to say whether the bombers were Egyptians or foreigners and for the moment they are concentrating their efforts on identifying the vehicles and the source of the explosives.The international news channel CNN quoting Egyptian officials said yesterday that bombers could have reached the Egyptian coast by speedboat from nearby Jordan or Saudi Arabia.An Interior Ministry official said he had no information about that theory.- Nampa-Reuters