Egyptian Police Hunt 3 Suspects

As Over 70 Others Are Questioned About Saturday's Bombing

(CBS/AP) 
Two of the men left a green Isuzu pickup packed with explosives in the Old Market area, which later blew up after apparently being set off by a timing device, the officials said. The bomb blew a 16-foot-wide crater into the middle of the road, which police have cordoned off with yellow tape.

The two other militants drove a white pickup truck to Naama Bay. One got out along the way in a parking lot where he planted a small bomb rigged with a timer in a suitcase. The other slammed the truck into the Ghazala hotel in a suicide bombing. As frantic people fled the scene, the bomb exploded in the parking lot 150 yards away from the hotel, killing at least seven people, the officials said.

Two groups made rival claims of responsibility but neither statement could be authenticated.

One group, the Abdullah Azzam Brigades of al Qaeda in Syria and Egypt, also claimed responsibility for the October bombings in Taba and for a dual shooting-bomb attack in April in Cairo. It claimed the Cairo attacks were in retaliation for the arrests and torture of an estimated 3,000 people in Sinai following the Taba blasts.

Also, the previously unknown Holy Warriors of Egypt said it had carried out the Sharm attack.

Local investigators are examining the possibility that foreigners carried out the blasts, which have sent shock waves through this country's vital tourism industry.

"It's not just my job that's at risk today. It's everyone's here," said Mohammed Ahmed, 32, chief of a marine rescue team. "It's all about tourists. if they don't come, we don't work."

Sharm's international airport was crowded with tourists wanting to leave Egypt early for home. Others were making scheduled returns to Europe and beyond. Some airlines have flown extra planes to Sharm to carry home tourists wanting to cut short holidays.

"We didn't want to push our luck," said Andreas Heimsath, a 40-year-old German traveling with his son on return to Frankfurt. "You never know whether something like that can happen again."

Egyptian workers labored to clean up rubble and twisted metal in the Old Market area and repair damaged souvenir shop fronts and cafes under a sun-soaked sky. Glass from the windows of bomb-ravaged cars still covered streets.

The U.S. Embassy in Cairo says an American citizen was among the dozens of people killed in the bombings at the resort.

An Embassy spokesman says one of the dead was identified as an American, but declined to give the victim's identity or gender.

But an Egyptian security official said the victim was a 27-year-old woman who was staying with her boyfriend in the resort. The official says she was wounded in the blasts and brought for treatment in Cairo, where she died.

Egypt's Health Ministry said 63 people were killed. But the Sharm el-Sheik International Hospital said at least 88 people were killed, most of them Egyptians.