DHAKA: Two German female tourists were stabbed to death while four other foreigners were wounded in an attack Friday (July 14) at Red Sea resort in Egyptian Hurghada city, reports Associated Press quoting a state official.
The assault came just hours after a shooting near some of Egypt's most famous pyramids outside of Cairo killed five policemen.
The motive behind the stabbing was unclear and the Interior Ministry of Egypt said the attacker at the Red Sea resort was arrested immediately.
A security official said the attacker, a man in his 20s dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans, wielded a knife and intentionally sought to attack foreigners.
"Stay away, I don't want Egyptians," the assailant had said in Arabic during the attack, according to the official.
Without taking any blame for what appears to be a major security breach, the Interior Ministry said the attacker had sneaked into the hotel by swimming from a nearby beach.
In the killings of the five policemen outside of Cairo, no group claimed responsibility for the attack but it bore the hallmarks of a smaller Islamic militant group known as Hasm that has been behind similar shootings in recent months.
The attacker in Hurghada, one of Egypt's most popular beach resorts and diving centers, stabbed the tourists in the face, neck and feet, according to the security official.
Two German tourists died of their wounds while four tourists were wounded, including citizens of Ukraine and the Czech Republic, the official told The Associated Press.
In the attack on the policemen, gunmen riding on a motorcycle opened fire on a security vehicle patrolling a Giza village, next to some of Egypt's oldest pyramids outside of the capital, Cairo, killing the five policemen, the Interior Ministry and officials said.
The deadly shooting — on the Muslim weekend in Egypt, when traffic is slower — heightened fears of what has become near-weekly attacks by suspected Islamic militants after a blitz attack left 23 troops dead in northern Sinai a week ago.
Egypt has been under a months-long state of emergency following a series of deadly church bombings in the spring that killed scores of Christians.
According to the ministry, the militants sprayed the policemen's vehicle with machine-gun fire and fled the scene after one policeman returned gunfire.
However, a video widely circulated on social media appears to show the attackers faced no resistance. It shows them seizing the policemen's weapons and radios and setting fire to the bodies after the shooting.
Friday's attacks threaten a new blow to the country's struggling tourism industry and economy. The year before the 2011 uprising, nearly 15 million tourists visited Egypt. Last year, the figure was at 5.3 million, according to official reports. In 2015, an Islamic State affiliate in Egypt downed a Russian plane over Sinai, killing all 224 passengers aboard.
Egypt has been rocked by deadly suicide bombings, drive-by shootings and other attacks since the 2013 military ouster of an elected Islamist president. The violence has been concentrated in the northern Sinai Peninsula, but attacks have spread to the mainland, including in the capital, where suicide bombers have struck churches and security headquarters.
BDST: 0909 HRS, JUL 15, 2017
SI
