Egyptians close off bombed hotel

With Israeli rescue workers gone, the Egyptian military closed off the scene of a luxury hotel bombing that targeted Israeli tourists to clear more debris yesterday and collect evidence for investigators tracing the explosives and vehicles.

Egyptian security officials said on Sunday that a Bedouin tribesman has confessed to selling explosives that might have been used in the three Sinai resort car bombings that killed at least 34 people.

The officials said investigators also were looking into Palestinian militant involvement.

The deadliest of the three attacks was at the Taba Hilton, where the front rooms on a 10-story wing of the hotel were sheared off.

David Michels, chief executive officer of Hilton Group PLC, visited the scene over the weekend, meeting with Egyptian officials and Hilton employees. Hilton said staff had been paid two months' salary while the damage is assessed.

"Our role is to support the local authorities to the best of our ability," Michels said in a statement yesterday.

Three car bombs, each packed with 200km of explosives, exploded Thursday night, one at the Taba Hilton just south of the Egypt-Israel border and two at Ras Shitan, a town of beach bungalows 55km south on the Red Sea.

Egypt's Interior Ministry put the death toll at 34, including 11 Israelis, eight Egyptians, one Russian, two Italians and 12 victims whose identities and nationalities remained unconfirmed. The dead also were believed to include eastern Europeans.

Tourism officials said the attacks apparently were not keeping travelers away.

Israeli Major General Yair Naveh said that in addition to the Isuzu pickup truck that exploded at the hotel, a suicide bomber inside detonated another bomb.

Israeli rescue and recovery crews finished their work at the shattered Hilton and went home Sunday evening, saying prayers for the dead as Egyptian civil defense officers cleared the rubble with axes and sledgehammers under generator-powered floodlights.

The site was closed yesterday, and no excavations could be seen.

An Egyptian investigator said the Bedouin tribesman who was cooperating with police said he had sold explosives to buyers assuming they would be sent to the Palestinian territories. Israeli officials have complained in the past of weapons and explosives being smuggled into the Gaza strip from Sinai.