2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks

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Sharm el-Sheikh is located on the coast of the Red Sea, at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

The 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks were a series of bomb attacks on July 23, 2005, targeting the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, located on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Eighty-eight people were killed and over 150 were wounded by the blasts, making the attack the deadliest terrorist action in the country's history. The bombing coincided with Egypt's Revolution Day, which commemorates Nasser's 1952 overthrow of King Farouk.

The attacks took place in the early morning hours, at a time when many tourists and locals were still out at restaurants, cafés and bars. The first bomb blast, at 01:15 local time (22:15 UTC), was reported in a market in downtown Sharm; shortly after, another was reported to have hit the Ghazala Gardens hotel, a 176-room four-star establishment in the Naama Bay area, a strip of beachfront hotels some 6 km from the town centre.

The blasts were powerful, shaking windows miles away. Fire and smoke could be seen rising from the explosion sites.

1 Explosion sites
2 Casualties
3 Responsibility
4 Background
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Explosion sites

The Ghazala Gardens Hotel, one of the targeted locations.

Mustafa Afifi, the governor of Janub Sina', described three separate blasts. While initial news wires spoke of 'up to seven' explosions, most recent news reports also indicate that there were only three explosions:

One near the bazaar (the "Old Market") in downtown Sharm el Sheikh.
Taxi Rank, Naama Bay: a bomb in a suitcase exploded in the taxi rank next to the Ocean Bay Hotel.
Ghazala Gardens Hotel, Naama Bay: a car bomber rammed his vehicle through the glass doors into the lobby at the front of the hotel

Out of the three explosions, only the Ghazala Gardens Hotel bomb hit its target. The other two bombs were intended to be detonated elsewhere (in other hotels/clubs), but the bombers were stopped at security checkpoints and had no option but to detonate themselves in areas without many tourists.

[edit] Casualties

While the official government toll a few days after the blast was put at 64, hospitals reported that 88 people had been killed in the bombings.

The majority of dead and wounded casualties were Egyptians. Among those killed were 11 Britons, two Germans, one Czech, six Italians, one Israeli, and one American. Other casualties, dead and wounded, included foreign visitors from France, Kuwait, the Netherlands, Qatar, Russia, and Spain.

[edit] Responsibility

A group calling itself the Abdullah Azzam Brigades (a reference to militant Islamist ideologue Abdullah Yusuf Azzam) was the first to claim responsibility for the attacks. On a website the group stated that "holy warriors targeted the Ghazala Gardens hotel and the Old Market in Sharm el-Sheikh" and claimed it has ties to Al-Qaeda. The authenticity of this statement has not been verified.

Additional claims were later made by two other groups calling themselves the "Tawhid and Jihad Group in Egypt" and "Holy Warriors of Egypt".

[edit] Background

Historically, foreign tourists have been a common target of attacks dating back to the early 1990s. Militants have typically been motivated by a combination of Islamic fundamentalism and opposition to the Mubarak government, and attacking foreigners including non-Muslims while hurting Egypt's tourist trade was seen as serving both goals.

The most bloody attack prior to the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings was the November 1997 Luxor massacre, in which 58 foreign tourists and four Egyptians died. In October 2004, a series of bomb attacks killed 34 people in Taba, also on the Sinai Peninsula. In April 2005 Cairo was hit by two days of terrorist violence, in which three foreign tourists were killed.

Unlike the October 2004 attacks, this attack does not appear to have been directed in particular against Israelis, for whom Sharm is a popular destination. However, one Israeli Arab was killed and another, Saneh Hussein, has been reported as being among the injured.