Tribesmen Held In Egypt Blasts

Investigators lifted fingerprints, swabbed dust and collected tissue from the sites of three car bombings Saturday and detained dozens of Bedouin tribesmen, including quarry workers who could have provided the explosives that killed at least 34 people.

Egyptian investigators said they suspect that a group of eight to 10 terrorists targeting Israelis carried out the Thursday night attacks, possibly slipping in from Saudi Arabia or Jordan on speed boats.

Israel has blamed al Qaeda for the attacks. The Egyptian investigators are leaning toward an al Qaeda connection as well, saying a local sleeper cell may have been awakened to carry out the attacks, Egypt's first terrorist strike in seven years.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, they said such a group would almost certainly be linked to Ayman al-Zawahri, who led the Egyptian Islamic Jihad before merging his group with al Qaeda in 1998. The Egypt-born Zawahri is now bin Laden's top deputy.

Three car bombs exploded Thursday night, one at the Taba Hilton just south of the Egypt-Israel border and two at a town of beach bungalows, Ras Shitan, 35 miles to the south on the Red Sea coast.

At the Taba Hilton, where a huge bomb sheared 10 stories off one wing, rescuers removed large slabs of concrete covering the lobby and dug down into the basement. They pulled out three bodies Saturday, including that of a toddler, the Israeli military said.

Egyptian officials said 34 people were killed, including at least nine Egyptians and at least five Israelis. Israeli authorities, who reported 33 dead, broadcast calls for relatives of the missing to donate blood for DNA comparisons with unidentified bodies.

Vladimir Bondarenko at the Russian Embassy in Cairo said at least one Russian woman was killed, and that 11 Russians remain unaccounted for. Two Italian sisters also were missing.

Investigators — both Israeli and Egyptian — scoured the three bomb sites on Saturday, photographing the craters and using lasers to measure blast distances.

They lifted fingerprints from the car in Taba that was believed to contain 440 pounds of explosives, and took DNA samples from nearby body parts in an effort to determine who the suicide bombers were, Egyptian security officials said on condition of anonymity.

Investigators also were doing "dust analysis" around the explosion sites to determine the type of explosives used, according to an Egyptian investigator who also worked on the 1997 massacre of 58 foreign tourists in Luxor, Egypt's last terrorist strike.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said samples had been sent to Cairo for analysis.

A team of four Egyptian prosecutors visited Ras Shitan, followed minutes later by five Israeli investigators who emerged from a minivan. American diplomats also briefly visited the camps, and one investigator said they were checking on any American casualties.

Several flattened bungalows were visible at the Moon Island Village camp, but police kept journalists away. The other camp, known as Castle Rock, was also closed.

Police detained dozens of Bedouin tribesmen on suspicion of providing explosives for the attacks, security officials said on condition of anonymity.

A senior police official, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said 20 people were being held, some of them quarry workers who presumably had access to explosives. Those 20, some or all of them bedouins, apparently were among the dozens mentioned by the security officials.

Israel's Channel 2 television reported that a total of 30 bedouins were arrested, two of whom it said were "more serious suspects."

Two Egyptian security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said investigators believe that the attacks were carried out by eight to 10 men, some of whom were suicide bombers.

They said at least one woman saw two men in the car believed used in the Taba attack before it exploded and was able to provide detailed descriptions.

"It was dark and she could not give 100-percent details, but the information she gave is good and provided some clues about how it all happened," one official said.

The officials said investigators were focusing on two possible scenarios, one involving foreign terrorists who slipped into Taba from Jordan or Saudi Arabia on speed boats, and another involving a sleeper cell in Egypt that was awakened for the attacks.

"It seemed to be planned and designed like the Sept. 11 attacks so that the explosions would take place simultaneously," one of the officials said.

He said investigators were leaning toward the foreigners' scenario because of the sophistication of the coordinated attacks, describing the home-grown scenario as a 10-15 percent possibility.

"The whole operation should have been planned abroad, even if some Egyptians could be involved," the other official said.

Israeli officials said they believed al Qaeda was behind the attack. "The type, the planning, the scope, the simultaneous attacks in a number of places, all this points to al Qaeda," Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalon told Channel 2. U.S. officials have also said al Qaeda likely played a role.

Abdel Rahim Ali, an Egyptian expert on Islamic radical groups, said whether the attackers came from Egypt or another country, al Qaeda's involvement was clear.

"Egyptian extremist groups can hardly execute such big operations," he said. "They lack expertise and potential. ... This looks like a new group of Islamic activists who have been sleeping for years and now found it appropriate to wake up."

Israel's government, which last month warned citizens not to travel to the Sinai, said its warnings remained in effect and that all Israelis should return home.

Thursday's attacks, counterterrorism chief Dan Arditi told Israel radio, "don't lessen, even in the slightest, the risk that this will happen again."