| I don't really have a lot of confidence in the Egyptian coppers actually breaking up this nest of vipers. If they were capable of doing that, they'd have done it after the Taba bombings, almost a year ago. There's an AP article that I'll probably post that says the Egyptians are "questioning" the "culture-extremism link," but I'm guessing it'll be somewhat less effective than the measures Perv is taking in Pakistan. There's too much inertia there, and there are too many people like Makram Mohammed Ahmed, writing in Al-Ahram, who's still describing al-Qaeda as "the Mossad's toy." When they decide to get serious they can wipe it out in short enough order, or at least cause it to spend another 15-20 years rebuilding, but they simply aren't going to do it. Too much of the rest of their cultural underpinnings are nailed to it. |
Security forces said yesterday they were looking for 15 Egyptian militants suspected of carrying out the series of blasts that rocked the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh and claimed the lives of 88 people. The security forces along with terrorism combat units, backed by aircraft, have been deployed to Sinaiâs valleys and mountainous areas to search for the suspects. Sources at the state security in the resort said that the 15 men, many of whom are from local tribes in the north of Sinai, helped in smuggling around 500 kilograms of TNT and explosives into Sharm El-Sheikh. âWe have also identified four bodies we found at the scenes of the blasts and we believe that they were the perpetrators of the attacks,â said one security source who asked not to be identified. âThe four men who have been identified so far are Moussa Badran, Ihab Muhammad Rabia, Osama Al-Nakhlawi and Khaled Musaid and they are all of Bedouin origin,â he told Arab News. Police also identified the suicide bomber who blew up Ghazala Gardens Hotel in Naama Bay as Moussa Badran. The 30-year-old bomber, a resident of Sheikh Zawaid, a town near Al-Arish in northern Sinai, fled his family house soon after the Taba attacks in October. Many of his relatives were rounded up by the Egyptian police after the Taba attacks, and his brother is still in custody. âWe believe that there is a strong connection between the October Taba bombings and the recent bombings because we found out that Badran was a friend of Muhammad Fulayfel who is the brother of one of the Taba bombers and who also helped in preparing the attacks,â said another security source. While Badranâs family said he abandoned them five months ago and he was mentally retarded, police said Badran became very radical recently.
The other link to the Taba attacks are the material used in the two incidents. Police said most of the explosives used in Sharm El-Sheikh were consistent with the ones used in Taba and a similar strategy for the attacks was followed in both incidents in terms of the timing of the explosions and the location.
On Tuesday, a third group called Egyptian Tawhid and Jihad claimed in an Internet statement responsibility for the bombings, saying they were in response to US military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and to the mass arrests of thousands of innocent people in Al-Arish following the Taba blasts. As of press time forensic experts were trying to identify the head found at Ghazala Gardens which is said to belong to one of the suicide bombers.