The Times
April 26, 2006 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2151687,00.html Clear-up starts after deadly resort blasts By Stephen Farrell in Dahab and Devika Bhat Bombs that injured two Britons and killed up to 24 probably had timers THE ashen-faced diver surfaced carrying a black binliner filled with the bloody debris from the Red Sea blasts that killed up to 24 holidaymakers and wounded two Britons. No one inquired too closely into his clear-up mission; this was no leisure dive. On the promenade in front of him, Egyptians hosed away bloodstains from the previous day's three bombs, including a footprint perfectly preserved in red. Behind him, windsurfers scudded across the Gulf of Aqaba, already back out in search of the breeze. The Britons injured were named yesterday as Henry Luce, 42, and Sam Still, 24, originally from North Yorkshire. Both were in hospital in Cairo. Mr Luce, who is seriously injured, is a cousin of Lord Luce, the Lord Chamberlain, the most senior official at Buckingham Palace. He interrupted his duties yesterday to speak to his cousin's family. Mr Still, a freediving professional, was said to be conscious and able to talk but had suffered leg and neck injuries, with pieces of shrapnel embedded in his neck. He holds the record for freediving in Britain and became world champion last year after he took gold in the Static Apnea discipline - the ability to hold your breath underwater - with a winning time of 8min, 14sec. Mark Harris, of the British Freediving Association, said: "Sam had been there for several weeks' training for a competition in Dahab in June. He was on his way to meet a friend when the explosion happened. He has now been moved to a hospital in Cairo and I understand that he has been in talks with the British Embassy about whether to come home." Last night the Egyptian Interior Ministry lowered its death toll to 18 without explanation. The dead were mostly Egyptians but included a Russian, a Swiss, a German boy and a Lebanese. Among the injured were about forty Egyptians, three Danes, two Italians, two Germans, two French people, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian. Egyptian police detained at least ten people yesterday in connection with their inquiries into the blast. British holidaymakers were told that they would not be compensated if they cancelled or postponed holidays. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has not changed the level of its advice. Many of the divers and watersports enthusiasts who remained in Dahab said that they were aware of the risks after the similar attacks in nearby Sharm el-Sheikh and Taba that killed nearly 100 tourists. "It was a case of when," said Paul McBeath, 42, a Glasgow-born diving instructor, who moved to the Sinai resort five years ago. "The night before I'd been sitting around with a beer, talking with friends about the bombings in Taba and Sharm. We are in the middle of them. It was inevitable." Beachfront hotels were full of tourists celebrating Egyptian holidays, this time the Coptic Easter weekend coincided with Shem al-Nessim - the first day of spring - and a national holiday to celebrate the return of Sinai to Egypt in a peace deal with Israel. Mr McBeath said that he had been at home a few hundred yards away when the three blasts went off almost simultaneously at 7.15pm. He ran to the Red Sea Relax office, where one of his Egyptian colleagues had been thrown across the street by the blast. "I arrived as the sirens were going off. People were running around. It was chaos," he said. "Everyone was on the streets, throwing bodies and injured people on to pick-up trucks and driving them to hospital." The first bomb exploded beside the Al Capone restaurant, the second outside a supermarket always packed with Egyptian holidaymakers and the third near a tourist bridge. Security officials said that they were probably planted with timer fuses, not strapped to suicide bombers, but there was no immediate claim of responsibility.Dahab is a low-budget resort that is being upgraded for more affluent tourists. "This is not only an attack against tourism or the economy, it is an attack against all the Egyptian people. We should all stand up against them," said Ahmed Nazif, Egypt's Prime Minister. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: osint@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
