Egypt resort stab spree kills 2
Fiend swims in to slay tourists
A stealthy Egyptian killer fatally stabbed two German women after he swam to a popular resort beach with a massive kitchen knife and conversed with them in their native tongue.
Abdel-Rahman Shaaban, 29, sneaked into the Zahabia Hotel, a Red Sea resort in Hurghada, on Friday by swimming from a nearby beach.
He then engaged in casual conversation with the female tourists before attacking them.
After the brutal attack, the furtive Egyptian graduate student slinked into the hotel property next door, where he attacked and wounded four other female tourists, according to local reports.
The victims included two Armenians, one person from Ukraine and another from the Czech Republic, who he stabbed in the face, neck and feet, authorities said.
“Stay back — I am not after Egyptians!” Shaaban screamed in Arabic at his pursuers who eventually caught up with him, pinned him down and handed him over to police.
Tight security was put into effect at the resort after the attack.
Shaaban is from the Nile Delta province of Kafr el-Sheikh and attended business school at AlAzhar University.
No terror group has claimed responsibility for the gruesome attack. But it appeared to have been inspired by ISIS’s recent call for its Egyptian supporters to attack Egypt’s minority Christians and foreign tourists.
“According to everything that we know, this act was aimed at foreign tourists — a particularly perfidious and criminal act that leaves us sad, dismayed and angry,” the German Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday.
Cairo prosecutors questioned Shaaban on Saturday.
“The characterization of the action committed by the culprit, whether it is an individual act, criminal or terrorist, is not clear to the prosecution at this time,” officials said in a statement.
Police are also interviewing 15 hotel workers to piece together the timeline of the incident.
The stabbings may be connected to the militant group known as Hasm, which was responsible for similar attacks in recent months.
Authorities said Hasm is a splinter group from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist group Egyptians deem a terror organization.
The tourist attack occurred hours after five policemen were shot dead near Egypt’s famed pyramids in the Cairo area.