Tourists and police murdered as Egypt is rocked by violent attacks
TWO TOURISTS were yesterday killed and four wounded by a man with a knife in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada, according to Egyptian officials.
The Interior Ministry said the assailant was arrested immediately after the stabbings in a hotel. Security officials said the two who died were German.
An official said four other foreigners were wounded. They include citizens of Ukraine and the Czech Republic.
In Germany, the foreign ministry last night said it “cannot rule out” that German citizens were among the victims but it did not yet have that information. The German Embassy in Cairo was in close contact with Egyptian authorities.
The ministry said the initial investigation showed the man got into the hotel by swimming from a nearby beach, then stabbed the tourists in the face, neck and feet.
A security official said the assailant, a man in his 20s dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, was intentionally targeting foreigners. He is said to have shouted: “Stay away, I don’t want Egyptians.”
The assault came hours after a drive-by shooting near some of Egypt’s famed pyramids outside Cairo killed five policemen.
Masked gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire on a security checkpoint near some of the country’s oldest pyramids in Giza.
The drive-by shooting in the early hours of the morning took place in the village of Abusir in Badrashin, part of Greater Cairo.
The officers were part of the force guarding Saqqara, one of Egypt’s most popular tourist sites and host to a collection of temples, tombs and funerary complexes.
Insurgents have carried out a number of attacks in Egypt since the 2013 military removal of elected Islamist president Mohamed Morsi.
The attacks could impact an already struggling tourism industry – a pillar of Egypt’s economy that employs millions of people.
The industry has suffered from political instability and a fragile security situation since the 2011 Arab Spring uprising.