Egyptian Police Hunt 3 Suspects

Egyptian police searched Sunday for three suspected bombers who they believe escaped the scene of country's deadliest ever terror attacks that killed 88 people and sent foreign tourists in this Red Sea resort scrambling to catch flights home.

A fourth attacker apparently blew himself up in a devastating suicide bombing of a hotel, security officials said as investigators pieced together clues a day after the three coordinated blasts which also injured more than 100 people.

Police have rounded up more than 70 people for questioning in Sharm el-Sheik and elsewhere in the Sinai Peninsula. None has been accused of involvement in the attacks, said security officials who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

The roundups appeared similar to police operations following last October's attacks at the Sinai resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, which Egypt's interior minister has said could be linked to the blasts in Sharm el-Sheik, some 125 miles to the south.

"Security apparatuses must not resort to the same investigation methods after the Taba explosions where about 3,000 people were randomly apprehended," the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights warned in a statement.

Many of those detained after the October attacks complained they were tortured, according to locals and human rights groups.

Police were investigating whether one of three suspects still at large from the Taba bombings was the suicide bomber in Saturday's attacks. The parents of the fugitive were taken in by police in the northern Sinai city of el-Arish and DNA samples were taken from them, a police official in el-Arish said.

The DNA will be compared to bodies found at the Ghazala Gardens hotel, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the investigation's sensitivity.

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday the terrorist attacks in Egypt and London appear to be the work of al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, there was a heavy police presence Sunday around the bombing sites and restaurant strips which were eerily quiet.

Security officials suspect four terrorists used two pickup trucks loaded with 880 pounds of explosives, possibly hidden under piles of vegetables. They drove into Sharm along desert tracks from the north to bomb the Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay and a crowded coffee shop in an area called the Old Market two miles away.

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.