SHARM el-SHEIKH, Egypt (14 Aug 2005) -- Security forces have identified those responsible for last month's terror bombings in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and have arrested some of them, Egypt's interior minister said. Egypt's pro-government newspapers reported that three suspects were in custody in connection with the July 23 attacks at the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula in which at least 64 people, perhaps as many as 88, were killed. "The security apparatus have succeeded in revealing the details of the terror attack and were able to identify the culprits," Interior Minister Habib el-Adly told a youth gathering in Cairo. "Key suspects who participated in the planning and execution were arrested," he said. El-Adly did not provide details but Al Ahram, a pro-government daily, reported that one of the detainees is a farmer working for a Palestinian resident of el-Arish, a Sinai town close to the border with Gaza. Al Ahram said police found a tonne of explosives at a farm in el-Arish, but it did not make clear if the farm belonged to the Palestinian, who was not identified. On Friday security officials said two alleged plotters, a man and a woman, were captured after a gunbattle in which two police officers were wounded. The police had raided the Sinai hideout of the bombing suspects, about 25 kilometres east of the Suez Canal city of Ismailiya. | | Sharm el-Sheikh It said the woman was captured with an automatic weapon. Others in the group escaped to the rugged Sinai mountains. Investigators are focusing on the likelihood that homegrown Islamic militant cells based in the Sinai, possibly with international links, carried out the July 23 attacks, which involved two car bombs and a bomb in a knapsack. Last October, attacks in Taba and Ras Shitan, two other Sinai resorts, killed 34 people. SOURCE - 7News |
