Investigators identified an Egyptian as a possible suicide bomber in the weekend terror attacks at this Red Sea resort and were searching for his suspected Islamic militant cohorts -- the first break in the probe.
A relative of Moussa Badran told reporters on Tuesday that he disappeared after deadly attacks at two other Sinai resorts in October, and that some family members were detained afterward.
The development came as two security officials revealed that authorities received information of an imminent terror attack in Sharm el-Sheik several days before the bombings Saturday. But they believed casinos would be targeted, so security was increased around those sites, not hotels.
The officials would not say where the tip came from but said headquarters in Cairo told security forces in Sharm to be on alert and to step up measures around key locations.
It appeared authorities chose the wrong possible targets to watch, said one of the officials in Cairo. Both officials are close to the inquiry and spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not authorized for release.
Security was heightened around casinos on the theory they would be attacked because Israelis come to Sharm for gambling, which is banned in their country.
The government has sacked the heads of security in North and South Sinai provinces, an apparent sign of the failures that may have allowed the assault on one of Egypt's most closely guarded tourist towns.
Instead of going after casinos, bombers in two explosives-laden trucks targeted hotels. One plowed into the Ghazala Gardens reception area, leveling the lobby.
A second headed for another hotel but got caught in traffic and blew up before reaching the target. A third explosive device, hidden in a knapsack, went off minutes after the Ghazala blast at the entrance to a beach promenade. As many as 88 people were killed.
Police had been studying two bodies found at the Ghazala as possible bombers because the remains were dismembered. DNA tests identified one of the bodies as that of Moussa Badran, an Egyptian resident of Sinai who police said has links to Islamic militants.
Initially, officials said the body was that of Badran's brother Youssef. The officials did not give a reason for the change in identification.
The second body from the Ghazala is still being tested. A third body in Sharm's Old Market, the site of the other truck explosion, is also being examined as a possible bomber.
Moussa Badran -- a resident of Sheik Zawaid, a town near el-Arish in northern Sinai -- fled the family house soon after a terror attack last October at two other Red Sea resorts, his stepmother said.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has