Egyptian police hunt six Pakistanis over resort attack

POLICE said yesterday they were searching for six Pakistani men in their widening investigation into Egypt’s deadliest terror attack that killed at least 88 people at the Red Sea resort, according to the latest figures.

Police were circulating photographs of the six, who went before Saturday's attacks, in and around this southern Sinai resort city.

The involvement of Pakistanis in the attack in Sharm el-Sheik would be unprecedented, as non- Egyptians rarely have been linked to attacks here. It also would be extremely difficult for a group of young Pakistanis not to be noticed in Sharm, one of the heaviest policed cities in Egypt.

Pakistani involvement, if proven, would increase suspicions that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network may have been involved.

An official at the Pakistan Embassy in Cairo said his embassy was in contact with Egyptian authorities over the issue.

Many Pakistanis use Egypt as a route to travel to Europe to find jobs, he said.

Police have detained more than 70 people in Sharm and other parts of the Sinai Peninsula during the investigation.

The investigators said they were looking into whether the six men had any involvement in carrying out Saturday's bomb attack.

Police were to conduct DNA testing on the remains of a suicide bomber found in a car that rammed into the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay.

Two other blasts rocked a parking lot near the hotel and the Old Market two miles away.

South Sinai Governor Mustafa Afifi said the Ghazala suicide bomber ran down and killed two security guards before detonating his explosives at the reception.

Shortly after, a backpack filled with explosives blew up near a parking lot and taxi stand close to the Ghazala.

The terrorist involved in the third blast in the Old Market had intended to attack a hotel.

But the attacker was stopped in a line of cars at a nearby police checkpoint and got out of his pickup before it exploded.

On Sunday, security officials said the bombers appeared to have entered Sharm in two pickup trucks loaded with explosives hidden under vegetables and that police were searching for three suspects believed to have survived the bombings. It was unclear if police were linking those three in any way to the six Pakistanis being sought.

Before the attacks, the militants rubbed serial numbers off the trucks' engines, the officials said. Such serial numbers had been a key clue Egyptian investigators had used to track down those behind the October bombings at two resorts farther north, Taba and Ras Shitan.

Investigators also were examining whether the Ghazala suicide bomber was one of five suspects still at large from the October attacks.

But the sophistication of the Sharm bombings and their timing on the heels of two rounds of attacks in London raised worries of a wider international connection.