Death Toll Rises to 88 in Egypt Bombings

The death toll from predawn blasts here climbed to at least 88 Saturday as dazed emergency crews combed the wreckage for victims in the brazen attack on a seaside resort well-known for its thick presence of intelligence and security agents.

Two shadowy organizations, one of them professing to be linked to Al Qaeda, made competing claims of responsibility for the three large explosions that echoed in quick succession along the Red Sea coast. The blasts gutted a luxury hotel, devastated a shopping center and left a popular taxi stand slick with the blood of tourists. At least 119 people were wounded.

Launched on the anniversary of the 1952 revolution that overthrew the Egyptian monarchy, it was one of the deadliest terrorist strikes experienced by this often-bloodied country. Condemnations poured in from dignitaries around the world.

The Interior Ministry indicated that most of the dead were Egyptians, but Britons, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Qataris, Saudis, Czechs, Germans and Italians were reportedly also killed in the blasts. It could be some time yet before all the victims are known -- dozens of bodies were reportedly charred beyond recognition.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak flew here Saturday to inspect the damage and visit victims in the hospital. Later, he grimly vowed to hunt down the bombers who had penetrated his prize tourist haven and exposed a weak spot in Egypt’s powerful intelligence services.

Mubarak owns a villa in Sharm el Sheik, and the city has served as a showcase for Egypt’s Mideast peacekeeping efforts during innumerable international summits.

“This cowardly, criminal act is aimed at undermining Egypt’s security and stability and harming its people and its guests,” Mubarak said in televised remarks. “This will only increase our determination in chasing terrorism.”

The blow is particularly keen for Mubarak, who is widely expected to nominate himself this month to run in Egypt’s first competitive presidential election. The attacks come at a time when Mubarak is striving to remind Egyptians of his military prowess and steady -- if autocratic -- hand. When the attacks began, the tourists who haunt the lively, gaudy shorelines of the Sinai Peninsula were still smoking water pipes under the stars, tossing back beers and shopping for bottled water and postcards at late-night convenience stores.

Not long after 1 a.m., two powerful car bombs tore through the summer night. The first rocked the Old Market, a knot of strip malls adorned with Roman arches and flush with souvenir shops. The blast tore through a patch of pavement where microbuses load up for trips, and the damage was flung in a wide arc.

“Those are the buses that all the Egyptians use to go back home,” said Osama Ahmed, a 25-year-old merchant who huddled in a slim wedge of shade Saturday to watch investigators pore over the twisted cars. “We saw bodies without arms, without legs. It was an untold scene. Horrible.”

Around the same time, a second automobile rigged with explosives raced up the driveway to the sprawling Ghazala Gardens Hotel, slammed its way into the reception hall and blew up. The luxury hotel had been packed with vacationers gathered in the bar, in the Italian restaurant and in the lobby.

“I saw a lot of panic, a lot of running, a lot of smoke,” said Samy Negah, an Egyptian journalist vacationing here. “I saw bodies on the ground, dead people.”

In the third attack, a bomb may have been hidden in a bag and abandoned at a taxi stand where frightened tourists had dashed after the first bombs went off. Several witnesses said they saw a man drop the bag onto the ground and jump into a taxi.

“I saw some guy rushing, saying, ‘Taxi, taxi, taxi.’ He threw a bag outside the car and then he drove away,” said Mohammed Mustafa, 27, a cafeteria worker who had been walking his dog past the taxi stand.

Mustafa said he didn’t think much of the abandoned bag at the time. All around him, people were in a panic, behaving irrationally. Then the bomb went off.

In style and geography, the attacks echoed a series of coordinated bombings that rocked the Sinai resorts of Taba and Nuweiba and a nearby village in October, killing 34 people. Because those resorts lay close to the Israeli border, and because many of the victims were Israeli tourists, some Egyptian officials argued that the blasts were an outgrowth of the Palestinian intifada rather than a salvo in an internal struggle.

But Interior Minister Habib Adli, who surveyed the damage Saturday and called the latest strikes “an ugly act of terrorism,” told reporters that the attacks were probably linked to the October bombings. “We have some clues, especially about the car that was exploded in the Old Market, and investigators are pursuing” them, he said.

The first group to claim responsibility for the weekend attacks calls itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades, Al Qaeda, in Syria and Egypt. The same organization claimed responsibility for the October bombings and for a pair of minor attacks on tourist sites in Cairo this spring.

The second claim emerged a few hours later when the previously unknown Holy Warriors of Egypt faxed a statement to newspapers saying it had carried out the attacks. The fax listed the names of five people who it said were the bombers, Associated Press reported.

In the wake of the October attacks, the Egyptian government had unleashed massive force in the Sinai Peninsula. To the consternation of human rights groups, thousands of Egyptians were arrested as security agents combed the desert villages for information on the blasts.

The trial of two men accused of involvement in the Taba bombings is set to begin today. But this weekend’s attacks prompted their lawyer to ask the judge for a postponement of the trial.

“What’s happening now in Sharm el Sheik proves that the Taba case is bigger than what the government is trying to make it look like,” said Ahmed Seif Islam, director of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center. “The current situation says the [Taba] files are incomplete and unrealistic.”

At least 43 foreigners were wounded in Saturday’s attacks: 13 Italians, nine Britons, five Austrians, five Germans, four Spaniards, a Czech, an Israeli Arab, two Saudis, two Kuwaitis and a Qatari.

British Ambassador Derek Plumbly said that “a number” of Britons remained missing. No U.S. citizens were reported hurt or missing in the attacks, an American Embassy spokesman said.

Italian authorities identified one of the dead as Sebastiano Conti, 34, an Italian who had been in Sharm el Sheik on his honeymoon. Relatives in Italy expressed their grief as well as fear at not having heard from Conti’s bride, Daniela Maioana, nor his brother Giovanni, a cameraman for an Italian television station.

“This is such a tragedy,” Sandro Petretto, Conti’s boss, told the Italian news agency ANSA. “This was supposed to be their wedding trip.”

Condemnations came from throughout the region and beyond. President Bush called Mubarak to offer his support.

“Standing together with the rest of the civilized world, we will win the conflict against this global scourge,” White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, traveling in the region, also condemned the attacks.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and innocent victims from many nations who suffered in this senseless attack,” she said. “At this difficult time of testing, the United States stands with our friend and ally Egypt.”

Rice, who was in the West Bank on Saturday for talks with Palestinian officials, said she had telephoned her Egyptian counterpart, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit.

Later, at a joint news conference with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, Rice said of the attackers: “They will not succeed in destroying our way of life.”

Abbas, too, denounced the attacks.

“We condemn this crime just as we condemned all the terrorist attacks that took place in London, Turkey and Beirut,” he said.

Times staff writers Henry Chu in Sharm el Sheik, Tracy Wilkinson in Rome and Laura King in Jerusalem and special correspondent Nora Younis in Sharm el Sheik contributed to this report.