In Egypt, Tourists Still Go to Scene of Massacre, but Many Foreigners Flee

Intrepid tourists with fanny packs, water bottles and sun hats were back Tuesday at the Temple of Hatshepsut, their tour leaders guiding them past flecks of congealed blood on the hieroglyphics and around other grisly reminders of the terror that reigned here 24 hours earlier.

Although the temple was reopened to tourist traffic, hundreds of other foreigners were departing Luxor as quickly as they could after a massacre by Islamic militants Monday that claimed at least 58 lives of visitors from Britain, Germany, Japan, Switzerland and elsewhere--the worst terrorist attack in the country in memory. Men with machine guns had mowed down the visitors and, in some cases, stabbed and mutilated them as well, witnesses said.

Around the world, tour operators Tuesday reported cancellations of bookings for Egypt by the thousands for the upcoming winter season. An outraged President Hosni Mubarak descended on Luxor, pledging strong new measures to better protect foreign visitors. He said Egypt’s security forces--far from being too brutal, as some critics claim--have not been tough enough.

Mubarak also upbraided security officials for the lack of adequate police to prevent the temple killings. “The area is full of tourists,” he said. “And you tell me police are [1 1/4 miles] away. This is a joke of a strategy.”

To underscore his point, Mubarak accepted the resignation of Hassan Alfi, since 1993 the interior minister and the official leading the fight against the militants. Alfi’s nemesis, Gamaa al Islamiya--the most violent of several factions fighting Egypt’s secular government--claimed responsibility for Monday’s killings in faxes to international news agencies.

Gamaa, whose name means the Islamic Group, claimed in the communique that the massacre was a hostage-taking scheme gone awry. Group members said they hoped to barter hostages to win the release of their spiritual leader, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, imprisoned in a U.S. penitentiary since his 1995 conviction for conspiring to attack New York landmarks, including the United Nations and the World Trade Center.

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Survivors, however, said Tuesday that the killers were on a murderous rampage from the onset of their attack and never showed the slightest interest in taking hostages.

Statements from the driver of a commandeered tour bus and from a wounded guard, both in Luxor Hospital, gave a fuller account of what happened in the two hours before six gunmen were pursued and killed in desert hills near the Valley of the Queens, an ancient cemetery.

Guard Said Ahmen Khassam, 40, said that six men dressed in black clothing arrived at the temple about 8:45 a.m. and started to walk past the ticket collection booth. When another guard there challenged them, Khassam said, the last man walking past pulled a gun from his bag and answered: “This is the ticket.” With that, he opened fire, killing two police officers at the entrance and putting the gunmen in control of the site.

Khassam said the men immediately began shooting and killing indiscriminately.

Most of the foreign victims were from a bus of Swiss tourists who had arrived a few minutes before. Some were killed on the ground level, while others were shot walking up the ramp to the temple’s second level. Many sought shelter in the shadows of the colonnades that flank either side of the ramp between the temple’s second and third tiers.

Behind the colonnades on either side of the ramp are two ancient temples--the Chapel of Anubis and the Chapel of Hathor--both famed for their raised murals about the life of Hatshepsut, the only woman ever to rule as a pharaoh. Most of the killing took place in these chapels, with 15 to 20 corpses found in each.

“There were people still moving [after being shot], and they killed them by cutting their throats with knives,” Khassam said.

Ali Ahmen Youssef, a local journalist, said he saw 15 bodies, five of which had been mutilated. In one case, he said, a victim was cut open and a pamphlet demanding support for Rahman was stuffed in the body.

How long the killing at the temple lasted is a subject of dispute--but it seems to have gone on for about 45 minutes. When they finished, the attackers left in their car and hijacked a tour bus on its way to the complex.

That vehicle was driven by Hagag Nahas, 36, who said from his hospital bed that he was forced to stop when the gunmen fired at him. When they boarded the bus, they threatened to kill him numerous times and announced that they wanted to be driven to a “crowded place” so they could resume their rampage.

Nahas said he refused and was beaten with a rifle butt. He said he drove in circles until at last the bus attracted the attention of a police officer, who began following it in a car.

For reasons that remain murky, the gunmen stopped the bus and started into the nearby hills on foot. But the police officer shot at them, hitting one. The remaining five proceeded into the mountains but were chased in a running gun battle with villagers from the area and with police.

The government said all five gunmen were killed by security forces. But Youssef, the Luxor journalist, said he believes that they died before police reached them--having killed one another or committed suicide rather than risk arrest and interrogation.

Police said that at least one of the gunmen was an Islamic Group member who had participated in previous armed attacks on police.

The Interior Ministry, meantime, revised without explanation the number of foreign visitors killed, from 60 to 58. Besides the foreigners, four Egyptian citizens and six attackers died. News agency reports have said the victims included 31 Swiss, as well as Japanese, Germans, Britons, a Bulgarian, a Colombian and a French citizen. Seven other victims have not yet been identified.