Egypt bus blast kills driver and two tourists

A bomb on a tourist bus in Egypt’s Sinai killed at least two South Koreans and the Egyptian driver yesterday, army and security sources said, in the first attack on tourists since an army takeover in July spurred an Islamist insurgency.

The interior ministry said the bus was travelling from St Catherine’s Monastery, a popular tourist destination in the south Sinai, to nearby Israel when it was attacked. It did not state the cause of the blast, in which 24 people were wounded. Two security sources said a bomb had been detonated either inside or near the bus.

“This is a terrorist act that was carried out with an explosive device,” said an army source. Egyptian officials use the word “terrorist” to describe Islamist militants.

Presidential spokesman Ehab Badawy called the attack a “despicable act of cowardice directed at innocent tourists”.

Al-Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants based in the largely lawless Sinai peninsula have stepped up attacks on security forces since army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July after mass protests against his rule.

Shift in strategy
If militants were behind yesterday's bombing, it would mark a shift in strategy to attacking "softer" tourist and economic targets. Egypt's vital tourism industry has been hit hard by three years of political turmoil and street protests.

Field Marshal Sisi, who is expected to announce his candidacy for the presidency soon, had hoped a political road map unveiled after Mr Morsi's overthrow would stabilise Egypt, which has a peace treaty with Israel and controls the Suez Canal.

South Korea's foreign ministry confirmed the deaths of two of its nationals and said nine had been wounded. It said 32 South Koreans were on the bus and the tourists were Christians from the same church in South Korea. The attack revived memories of an Islamist uprising in the 1990s that often targeted tourists and took years for then-president Hosni Mubarak to crush.

“I hope this will be an isolated incident that will not recur,” Egyptian tourism minister Hisham Zaazou said. “All the rest of the country is safe and secure, and what happened can happen anywhere in the world.”

Islamist militants launch near-daily attacks on security forces in northern Sinai, while the south, with its many Red Sea resorts, had been seen as a relatively safe tourist destination. In 2004, a bomb at the Sinai resort of Taba killed 34 people, including Israeli tourists.

State television showed a photograph of the bus, its windows smashed and the roof partially torn off. Black smoke billowed from the explosion on a palm-tree-lined boulevard.

“The militants in Sinai are now looking for soft targets, without entering confrontation with police and armed forces, who have taken precautions,” said Mustapha Kamel al-Sayid, a professor of political science at Cairo University.

“This is a cheap win for them without a high risk.”

While the army-installed government has driven the Muslim Brotherhood underground, it is struggling to cope with the militants in the Sinai, despite repeated army offensives.

Morsi in dock
The blast occurred as Mr Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected leader, appeared in court in Cairo on charges of conspiring with foreign groups to commit terrorist acts.

Lawyers for Mr Morsi protested they could not hear their client speak from inside a soundproof glass cage. The judge controls the microphone that allows defendants to be heard. The judge ordered a lawyer’s syndicate to assign 10 lawyers to defend Mr Morsi at the trial’s next hearing on February 23rd. – (Reuters)