Sinai resort bombings kill 30, Al-Qaeda-linked group claims responsibility

TABA, Egypt (AFP) - At least 30 people were killed and 120 wounded when car bombs exploded at resorts packed with Israeli holidaymakers on the Red Sea coast of Egypt's Sinai desert in attacks claimed by a group saying it belongs to Al-Qaeda.
The most powerful of the explosions left carnage and destruction at the Hilton Hotel in Taba, a town just across the Israeli border, with another 30 people reported missing.
Also hit was a backpackers resort at Ras Shaitain (Devil's Head) in Nuweiba, 65 kilometres (40 miles) down the coast from Taba.
A group calling itself Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam and claiming to be part of the militant Al-Qaeda network took responsibility for the blasts in a statement posted on an Islamist website.
"The Brigades of the Martyr Abdullah Azzam give our Arab and Islamic nation the good news of the heroic martyrdom operations in Egypt, through which our sons in the squad of the leader martyr cleansed the land of Taba from the filth of the Jews," said the statement, which could not be independently verified.
Israel's deputy defence minister, Zeev Boim, said earlier that the blasts "appear to be an international terror attack with the hallmarks of Al-Qaeda".
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said it was too early to determine who was responsible for the attacks, also claimed by two other groups.
"It is a terrorist action, but we cannot yet tell who carried it out," he said.
The explosions followed official warnings last month from Israelis that its people should keep out of the Sinai because of possible attacks.
An Israeli army general at the site said 23 Israelis and five Egyptians were killed, stressing that was a provisional toll.
"For the moment, 28 bodies have been recovered, including those of 23 Israelis and five Egyptians," General Yair Naveh told Israeli public radio, without specifying from which blast the bodies were recovered.
"We think there are more dead under the rubble, but work to clear the rubble will take time, no doubt several days," the general said, adding that around 20 people were hospitalized in Israel.
A total of 120 people were wounded in the attacks, and 30 remain missing, Naveh also said.
He later said contact had been lost with "around 100 Israelis" vacationing in Sinai and issued a call for people to get in touch with relatives so that a clear headcount could be made.
The army later said 29 people had died, including five Egyptians, but did not elaborate on the nationality of the other victims.
It said 27 people had been killed in Taba and two in Ras Shaitan.
Shamun Romash, the Israeli rescue operations chief at the hotel, added: "There is minimal hope of finding survivors because the explosion was very powerful."
According to Israeli officials, the Hilton attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in a car carrying 200 kilograms (440 pounds) of explosives and a second suicide bomber blew himself up by the hotel pool.
Local police said three Israeli tourists were killed in Ras Shaitan.
One car bomb blew up at the Moon Island beach hut camp, killing three, and one Israeli was wounded by another car bomb at the nearby Castle Beach camp, they said.
It was not clear whether those deaths were included in the official Israeli figures.
Egyptian police said seven Egyptians had been killed in the attacks and another 14 hospitalized, without clarifying where the casualties occurred.
London said two Britons were among the wounded, Rome said two Italian sisters were among the missing and Moscow said one Russian had died and eight were hurt.
Israelis streamed back home across the border checkpoint between Taba and the Israeli resort of Eilat as ambulances shuttled back and forth bearing bloodied victims, including children.
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 more than 90 Palestinians dead since last week.
As the attacks drew international condemnation, Egypt threw up a security cordon around the blast sites in the Sinai and boosted airport security in Cairo.
An El Al flight out of Cairo was held up for three hours, as officials ran extra checks and passengers were made to go through additional layers of security.
A previously unknown group calling itself Islamic Unity Brigades also claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying they were to avenge Israel's assassination last March of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, leader of the Palestinian radical group Hamas.
Another group calling itself Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya (World Islamist Group) said it had acted to avenge "the Palestinian and Arab martyrs dying in Palestine and Iraq".
A spokesman for the hardline Islamic Jihad group said from Gaza City that Palestinian militant groups had nothing to do with the deadly bomb attacks.
And General Naveh, in a press conference said: "It is clear to us that (the authors) came from Sinai."
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.
Taba itself was only returned in 1989 after years of wrangling.
Thousands of Israeli tourists are drawn to the Sinai, especially for its outstanding Red Sea diving and its casinos, banned in the Jewish state.
An estimated 30,000 Israelis had crossed into Egypt during the almost week-long Jewish holiday of Sukkot, a border official said.
An Israeli travel advisory issued on September 9 said security services had obtained "concrete intelligence about the dangers of attacks" in the Sinai but media reports said vacationing Israelis were continuing to flock to the area.