Egypt bomb attack kills four on tourist bus

Its is a very sad story,a bomb has torn through a bus in the Red Sea resort town of Taba, killing at least four and injuring 27, signalling a serious escalation in the six-month insurgency that until now has targeted security and government sites but on Sunday hit at the heart of Egypt’s dying tourism industry.

The explosion, which occurred near the Taba border crossing between Egypt and Israel, ripped through the bus, believed to carrying mostly South Korean tourists who had been visiting the ancient monastery of St Catherine’s in central Sinai, Egyptian officials said.

Four South Koreans and the Egyptian driver were killed in the blast, which injured almost all 33 passengers on board, an official told Associated Press.See more below...

The injured, including 10 believed to be in critical condition, were being treated in Egyptian hospitals.

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State media are reporting the bomb exploded near the Hilton hotel in Taba, while security sources say the blast appeared to be caused by an explosive device planted either on the roadside or inside the bus, Reuters reported.

Egypt’s Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou is heading to the scene of the blast, a spokesman said.

It is the latest attack in a steadily escalating Islamist insurgency that has gained pace since the Egyptian military forced the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Mursi to step down on July 3 last year.

Dozens of police officers, many from the restive North Sinai, have been killed in the wave of bombings and targeted assassinations, as the campaign of terror moved closer to the capital, Cairo.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, an Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist militant group based in Sinai, has taken responsibility for many of the attacks, although at times the military-backed Egyptian government has chosen instead to point the finger of blame at the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has denied responsibility for any of the terror attacks.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for Sunday’s bomb, but if Ansar Beit al-Maqdis or another militant organisation were behind the blast, it would mark a clear shift from targeting police and security to hitting tourists.

Minister of the Interior Mohamed Ibrahim survived an assassination attempt on September 5 when a parked car exploded as his motorcade passed by in Nasr City, near Cairo, injuring 21 people, some critically.  On November 17, Mohamed Mabrouk, a lieutenant colonel in the state security service, was shot and killed near his home in Nasr City. And on December 24, a massive explosion in the northern city of Mansoura killed 16 people, mostly policemen, and injured more than 130.

Since then there has been a blast on a busy street in Nasr City, near the entrance to Al-Azhar University, as well as a huge explosion outside the Imbaba courthouse – also in Cairo – on the first day of last month’s constitutional referendum.

The crisis has exposed what some experts say is a weakness in the country’s overstretched security services that has allowed the terrorism of the North Sinai to reach Egypt’s capital.

The Egyptian Army said in September it had launched a massive military offensive involving as many as 20,000 troops to crush the Islamic insurgency in the Sinai – hundreds of militants have reportedly been killed but the attacks on police and security targets have continued.

The last major attacks on tourists in Egypt took place in 2006 when a bomb killed 23 people in Dahab. In 2005, 88 people died in a bomb attack in Sharm El-Sheikh, while in 2004, 34 people died and 135 were injured in a blast in Taba.

Egypt’s tourism industry – a mainstay of the country’s devastated economy – has been struggling to recover since the 2011 revolution that overthrew former president Hosni Mubarak and the political and security chaos that followed.

Meanwhile, the former president Mohamed Mursi appeared in court again on Sunday on charges of conspiring with foreign groups to commit acts of terrorism in Egypt. The hearing ended when Dr Mursi’s lawyers walked out of the courtroom in protest at the former president being forced to appear a soundproof dock