Police on Saturday questioned the suspected Muslim militant who stabbed to death two German women and wounded four others at a Red Sea beach resort, adding to the woes of Egypt’s hobbled tourism industry.
Judicial sources said the man who had swum ashore from a public beach in Hurghada to carry out Friday’s attack confessed to sharing the ideology of the Islamic State (IS) group, although there was no IS claim of responsibility.
The sources said the suspect, a 28-year-old from Kafr al-Sheikh Province in the Nile Delta, north of Cairo, has been transferred to the capital for questioning.
The prosecution said in a statement that it had not yet confirmed the assailant’s motives and urged the media “to stop resorting to speculation or getting ahead of the investigation.”
The streets of Hurghada were being heavily patrolled and security was stepped up outside hotels on Saturday.
“I was sitting down in my shop when we heard people shouting. We ran outside and heard that someone had swum to the next door hotel and was attacking foreigners,” said Rafic Rushdi, the owner of a hotel shop. “After killing two women, he ran towards our hotel. He was shouting that he was not after Egyptians, and some Egyptians intervened to stop him.”
After initial confusion over the nationality of the women killed, Berlin on Saturday said they were both Germans, rather than Ukrainians as earlier reported.
“I am very upset by this cowardly crime, my condolences to the families of the victims,” German Minister of Foreign Affairs Sigmar Gabriel said.
Among the four others wounded were two Armenian women and a woman from the Czech Republic, according to authorities in those countries.
It was not the first attack in Hurghada. In January last year, three tourists were wounded in a stabbing assault in the resort by two assailants with apparent IS sympathies.
In Tunisia, IS claimed a beach attack in June 2015 when a student armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and grenades went on a rampage near the Mediterranean resort of Sousse killing 38 holidaymakers, 30 of them Britons, before being shot dead by police.
Hurghada is one of Egypt’s most popular beach resorts, especially with Ukrainians and other European tourists.
Egyptian authorities say they have boosted security at the country’s tourist sites.
The industry provides the Arab world’s most populous country with much-needed revenues.
An IS bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a resort in the south of the Sinai Peninsula in 2015 killed all 224 people on board and decimated the country’s tourism sector.
Russia suspended all flights to Egypt in response and has yet to resume them.
IS has been waging a deadly insurgency concentrated in the north of the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
It has also killed dozens of Coptic Christians in church bombings and shootings since December last year and pledged further attacks.
On Saturday, a Muslim man stabbed a security guard at a church in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria after the guard asked to check his bag.
The attacker was quickly subdued and is being questioned, a police official told reporters.
The incident came days after leaders of the Christian minority suspended some services such as conferences and religious trips for three weeks over security concerns.
On Friday, unknown assailants shot dead five policemen just south of Cairo, in the latest of a series of attacks targeting Egypt’s security forces.
The killings came as police and the army said they were closing in on militants following a spate of deadly attacks in the Nile Valley and the Sinai.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in