Explosions from a car bomb and a suicide bomber tore through a resort hotel in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula where Israeli tourists were at the end of a Jewish holiday last night, officials said. There were at least 19 dead and the toll was likely to rise. Officials initially reported at least 30 dead, but by this morning a senior Israeli army officer, Yair Naveh, said rescuers had located 19 bodies in the rubble and 38 Israelis were missing. Egypt said at least 12 Egyptians were dead and at least one Briton is amongst the injured. The explosions were followed by two smaller blasts at other tourist sites in the Sinai that killed at least two Israelis, apparently caused by bombs in pickup trucks. Egyptian hospital officials said four people were killed in those explosions. Two bombs exploded in quick succession at the Taba Hilton. A car laden with explosives drove into the lobby of the hotel and detonated, while a suicide bomber blew up near the hotel swimming pool, an Israeli official said. Egyptian officials were investigating the blasts, and the Interior Ministry blamed them on "suspicious elements" angered at Egypt's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "Look at the timing. Look at the choice of place," Egypt's tourism minister, Ahmed El Maghraby, said in Taba. The Taba blast collapsed a 10-story wing of the luxury Hilton hotel built by Israel when it controlled Taba from 1967 to 1989. Israelis described a chaotic scene as the explosion brought the top floors of the hotel crashing into the lobby. Meir Frajun said his three children were playing one floor below the lobby when the blast tore through the building. He went down but found only two of them. "Everything was filled with smoke," Frajun told The Associated Press after crossing into the nearby Israeli resort of Eilat. "We were hysterically looking for the child. In the end we found him sitting outside with an Arab guest of the hotel." An Egyptian government spokesman said at least 30 people were killed, although the Interior Ministry later said it could confirm the deaths of only 12 Egyptians. Israeli news media initially cited officials saying up to 35 people were killed, but today Naveh said rescuers had located 19 bodies, including seven still beneath the rubble. He said there was still hope of finding people alive in the rubble today "because there are several air pockets." Egypt said more than 160 people were wounded, and Naveh said 122 injured had been taken to Israel for treatment. Egypt's health minister said a Briton and several Russians were among the injured. The explosions came a month after the Israeli government urged citizens not to visit Egypt, citing a "concrete" terror threat to tourists in an area. The warning, issued on September 9 by the counterterrorism centre in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, identified the Sinai Peninsula as the target of a potential attack. Four hours after the blast, Israel's military took command of the scene, according to the army spokeswoman, Brigadier General Ruth Yaron, but there were delays in sending Israeli forces and rescue workers across the tense border. Just before midnight, two smaller blasts struck the area of Ras Shitan, a camping area near the town of Nuweiba south of Taba, witnesses said. Earlier today, the charred hulks of Toyota pick-up trucks could be seen at the two sites. One was blasted apart, its motor lying on the ground 20 metres away. Amsalem Farrag, whose uncle and cousin own camps in Ras Shitan, said the two blasts were only five seconds apart. He said the camps were full of Israeli tourists. No established groups have claimed responsibility for the bombings, but two previously unknown groups each said they carried it out. Tawhid Islamic Brigades published a claim on a website that has been used frequently for such claims from Saudi Arabia and Iraq. And Jamaa Al-Islamiya Al-Alamiya, or World Islamist Group, called an international news agency in Jerusalem. Neither group offered detail of how it carried out the attack, as such claims usually do, and there was no way to confirm their authenticity. Egyptian government spokesman Magdy Rady suggested the blasts were related to the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians in the neighbouring Gaza Strip, where 84 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli offensive that began on September 29 to stop militants from firing homemade rockets into Israel. "I think the explosions are very related to what is going on in Gaza," Rady told AP. "We condemn these attacks, which have harmed many people." "I think it is very probable that there is a link between these three explosions," he added. "It is very unlikely they happened by chance." The security adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub, told Al-Jazeera television that no Palestinian factions were responsible for the explosions. Egypt upgraded a security alert at the airports in Cairo and in the southern tourist cities of Luxor, Hurghada and Aswan. Police were searching cars coming in and out of Luxor and Hurghada and there was a heavy police presence around hotels. Yaron, the Israeli army spokeswoman, said Israeli Brig. Gen. Efi Idan "took command over the event in Taba" four hours after the blasts. She said, however, "We still have some trouble in sending over all of the forces and their equipment to Taba." An Israeli foreign ministry spokeswoman said that Israel would help evacuate any of the 12,000 to 15,000 Israelis who wish to leave the Sinai. This morning, thousands were streaming into Eilat, across the border. Israel set up temporary accommodations in community centres, and Israeli radio reported a nationwide call for surgeons to get to Eilat. Israel's Army Radio reported that initially, Egyptian policemen fired in the air at the Taba border crossing as dozens of Israelis tried to break through to get home. Reporters from the Israeli side were unable to reach the scene, and no TV images were available several hours after the blast. More than 100 rescue workers, many wearing hard hats, were later allowed to cross, and graders were seen clearing rubble at the site. "In the background was the sunrise of Sinai over the water ... and in the foreground there was the destruction," Doron Kotler, commander of operations for the Israeli rescue service, told Israel's Channel 1 television. Egyptians reportedly allowed the teams in after Sharon instructed his diplomats to contact the Egyptians and expedite the crossing. The two countries signed a peace treaty in 1979, but relations have been chilly as a result of Israeli military actions in Palestinian areas. Rady said at least 30 people were killed and 160 injured in the Taba blast, and another seven Egyptians were injured in the Ras Shitan explosions. Israel's rescue service said it evacuated 108 casualties to Israel, including one dead and 48 in serious condition. An official at Taba Hospital said his institution had taken in 25 bodies from the Taba explosion and two more from Ras Shitan. An official at the Nuweiba hospital said two more bodies arrived there. Taba is the main crossing between Israel and Egypt and the gateway for thousands of Israelis who travel to the hotels and resorts on the Red Sea. Yesterday was the last day of the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot, when thousands of Israelis holiday in the Sinai. Egyptians also were in the midst of a long holiday weekend marking the anniversary of the start of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, so popular resort towns along the Sinai coast were packed. Egypt has long struggled with Islamic militants interested in overthrowing the secular government, but has contained the threat with periodic crackdowns and by allowing Islamists some political activity. The last major militant strike in Egypt was the 1997 massacre of 58 foreign tourists by Islamic extremists in the southern resort town of Luxor. Rady said the explosions are sure to have a negative effect - at least temporarily - on Egypt's tourism industry, one of the country's economic mainstays. "There will be damage definitely to the tourism in the area," he said, "but I hope it will not last long." | 
