Israeli tourists are still in danger in Egypt and should return home, Israel's security chief warned yesterday as investigators searched for proof that suicide car bombings at two resorts crowded with Israelis were carried out by the al-Qaeda network.
Israeli officials said 32 people were killed in Thursday's bombings at the Taba Hilton on the Egypt-Israel border and at a bungalow beach camp further south along the Red Sea coast. Egyptian officials could only confirm 24 dead.
Two bodies, including that of a toddler, were pulled out of the twisted wreckage of the hotel yesterday, the Israeli military said.
In the attack at the Taba Hilton, a vehicle packed with 200kg of explosives crashed into the lobby and blew up, shearing outer rooms off a 10-story wing of the resort. The attack was quickly followed with two more car bombs outside less glamorous beach-bungalow camps.
At the Taba hotel, Egyptian and Israeli rescuers used everything from jackhammers and drills to dogs and bare hands to search the wreckage. Trees around the hotel were filled with the bodies of charred birds.
Israeli officials, including the military intelligence chief, said on Friday that al-Qaeda was probably behind the attacks.
However, security chief Dan Arditi said yesterday that he hasn't yet ruled out possible participation of Palestinian militants.
Arditi said Israeli tourists in the Sinai Peninsula are still in danger, and urged them to come home. Thursday's attacks "don't lessen, even in the slightest, the risk that this will happen again," he told Israel Radio.
Arditi's agency last month urged Israelis not to travel to Sinai, saying it had concrete warnings about a possible terror attack.
Israel's government had never before issued such a severe travel advisory, but thousands of Israelis ignored it and spent the Jewish holiday period, which began in mid-September, in Sinai resorts. Many Israelis considered the desert peninsula a safe place to get away from their country, which has been hit by scores of Palestinian suicide bombings in the past four years of fighting.
Israeli security sources said the warnings a month ago apparently referred to Palestinian militants trying to sneak out of Gaza, which borders on the Sinai. Israel calls the peninsula the main weapons-smuggling route for Palestinian militants.
A US terrorism official in Washington said American officials suspect -- but aren't certain -- that al-Qaeda played a role because of the attack's level of sophistication. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Palestinian or Egyptian militant groups should not be ruled out.
Egyptian officials said it was too early to point to suspects.
Israel Radio quoted Egyptian officials as saying that fingerprints have been lifted from the car bomb and DNA samples taken from the remains of the bomber. The radio said several Bedouin tribesman have been detained on suspicion they delivered the explosives to the attackers.
There were several claims of responsibility -- including one from an al-Qaeda-linked group -- but none appeared credible.
The blasts occurred on Thursday night at the close of holidays in both Israel and Egypt, when the resort towns of the Sinai were packed with tourists, including up to 15,000 Israelis.
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