EGAD

"Thought to be secure"

So there has been another spectacular bombing this month. This one hit Sharm el-Sheik, the resort town at the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt.

NY Times coverage.
BBC coverage
Ha'aretz coverage

Responsibility has been claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself "Abdullah Azzam Brigades, al-Qaida, in Syria and Egypt" -- a name eerily similar to the name of the group that probably carried out the July 7 bombings in London. While the claim obviously cannot be confirmed yet, it is seen as generally credible, according to a reporter from the Cairo Daily Star who was on the radio just now.

The timing and targets are interesting. One would generally expect that an attack like this would be directed against Israel, since the Red Sea resorts are extremely popular with Israelis. Moreover, Sharm el-Sheik is the site at which Abbas and Sharon hammered out the terms of the "quiet" this spring, and has been used for many previous peace summits as well, because it had been "thought to be secure" (said aforementioned reporter). However, at this point Ha'aretz is reporting that only one Israeli was injured, and other indications suggest that killing Israelis was not the point.

This is a holiday weekend in Egypt, leading up to Egyptian National Day on July 26 (this commemorates the 1952 revolution against King Farouk), so the resorts were packed with more Egyptians than normal. Sharm el-Sheik is popular with Egyptians and Europeans; Israelis prefer the resorts farther north. The carbombs were detonated near a coffee shop full of Egyptian laborers and at a hotel popular with Europeans. As a result, it appears that the vast majority of the casualties were Egyptian.

The Abdulla Azzam statement celebrates a "smashing attack on the Crusaders, Zionists and the renegade Egyptian regime in Sharm el-Sheikh." The Ha'aretz translation continues:

We reaffirm that this operation was in response to the crimes committed by the forces of international evil, which are spilling the blood of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan and Chechny.

We declare it loud and clear that we will not be frightened by the whips of the Egyptian torturers and we will not tolerate violation of our brothers' land of Sinai.

Al-Jazeera has now translated the whole statement; this article mentions that Azzam was a Palestinian mujahedeen who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and is said to have been a source of inspiration for Osama bin Ladin. An interesting nexus, there.

It appears, then, that the rationale is analogous to that of many Iraqi guerillas, to attack Muslims seen as collaborating with America, Israel, and the West. So my thoughts and sympathy go out Egypt in general, and to the many wonderful Egyptians I met on the Red Sea coast in particular.