Police arrest 10 over Egypt bombings

POLICE arrested 10 people yesterday and divers retrieved body parts from the sea after a triple bomb attack that ripped apart the Sinai beach resort of Dahab on Monday.

The blasts came at the height of Egypt's tourist season, killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 80, many of them foreigners.

It was the third terror strike on a Sinai resort in less than two years and, once again, it happened as Egyptians were enjoying a national holiday.

It also seemed to open a rift between hardline al-Qaida sympathisers and other radical Muslim groups, like Hamas, which immediately moved to condemn the bombing.

Security police said they had detained for questioning 10 people three of whom had arrived in Dahab a day before the attack and tried to leave the resort 15 minutes after the explosions in a car with false number plates.

The police said they did not yet know if the explosions timed for maximum destruction in a promenade of bars, restaurants and shops in the early evening were caused by suicide bombers or bombs on timers.

"The theory is not clear yet," Cabinet spokesperson Magdy Rady said.

The blasts were so powerful that police divers worked yesterday morning to retrieve body parts from the shallow waters of the sea, as workers swept shards of glass from the streets.

At one spot near the beach, two black sandals lay in a pool of blood on a wooden footbridge.

Nearby, outside the supermarket where one blast occurred, a tiny shoe covered in blood lay on top of a baby stroller. Witnesses said the stroller belonged to foreign twin infants who they said looked European.

One twin was inside the shop with the mother when the blast occurred, and the other outside in the stroller, said Mohammed Emad, 16, who sells spices at the market and whose hand was hurt by flying glass.

The boy said he went with the mother and twins to hospital, where one of the twins died and the mother remained severely injured.

Another witness said tourists did not know where to run as the blasts kept coming.

"I heard the first bomb, I started running. When I heard the second one, we were still running," said Johanna Sarjas, a journalist from Finland who was on holiday. "It was chaotic because we didn't know in which direction to run."

Interior Minister Habib el-Adly put the death toll at 23, including 20 Egyptians and three foreigners.

Mr Rady said later that 18 people had died 12 Egyptians and six foreigners. The discrepancy in tolls could not be explained.

Dr Hazem Ahmed of Sharm el-Sheik Hospital said 85 people were wounded.

His hospital had admitted 10 foreign patients. Two of the injured were British nationals.

One of the dead was a German child, according to the German Foreign Ministry. Police said one Russian and one Swiss were also killed. At least three Israelis also were hurt in the attack, which sent a steady stream of cars back to Israel some 105km to the north.

Mr El-Adly said it wasn't immediately clear if the attack could have been carried out by a group as organised as those who detonated the earlier bombs.

"The devices used were not of the types which would have caused big destruction," he said.

The attacks came just one day after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden had urged Muslims to support al-Qaida in what he called a war against Islam.

But many Arabs have denounced al-Qaida-linked groups for attacking Arabs and Muslims, and the latest attacks seemed to widen a growing rift between al-Qaida sympathisers and other radical Muslim groups like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.