– DAHAB TRIPLE BOMBINGS

On 04/24/2006 at about 19:15 three explosions rocked the Tourists resort of Dahab on the Red Sea.  One explosion of a car bomb occurred in Ghazalia Market, packed with tourists at that time of the day. Tow other bombs exploded, in quick succession, at the seaside promenade, crowded with popular restaurants, one near the Nelson Restaurant and the other near the Aladdin Cafeteria.  23 people – 20 Egyptians and 3 tourists, were killed and over 60 wounded in the string blasts.

The triple Dahab attack happened just 18 months after the Hilton Taba Attack on 10/07/2004, and 9 months after the Sharm Bombings, on 07/23/2005. It is the third attack of its kind on Tourists resorts on the Dead Sea committed by an infrastructure of Egyptian Islamic militants, Bedouins from the Sinai Peninsula and Palestinian Hamas supporters from North West Sinai.

The attack came few days after the Egyptian Intelligence minister, Omar Suleiman, officially informed Israel and USA that Sinai is, now, clean of terrorists. On 04/19/2006 the Egyptian Television broadcasted the confession of 22 Islamists terror suspects who operated in Cairo and the nearby industrial town of Hiluan and called themselves “Al Taifa al-Mansoura” (The Victorious Denomination) – the name of one of the Islamic insurgency groups operating in Iraq.  

An organization named itself “Tawhid wal Jihad”** took through the web responsibility on the Attack.

The investigation revealed that the explosives used in the attack were unloaded from the hundreds of thousand of mines scattered in Sinai from the wars between Israel and Egypt. The Bedouins in Sinai Peninsula developed an expertise to uncover and unload the explosives from the mines and, eventually, to sell it whoever the buyer is, similar as in the previous attacks at Hilton Taba in 2004 and Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005.

The head and mastermind of the attack was identified as Nasser al-Mallahi, who replaced Dr. Khaled Musaid Salem as the head of the ‘Tawhid wal Jihad’ group in Sinai. He was killed two days later, on 04/26/2006, near El-Arish and his top aide – Abdallah Alyan Abu Jarair – was captured.

The attackers used stolen cars for the suicide attack. But, in edition to the basic motivation to commit the previous Taba and Sharm bombings, some of the Bedouins, who took part in the attack, revenged the harsh treatment, the massive arrests and the usage of torture by the Egyptian police during the Investigations over the previous Sinai tourist resorts attacks.

 

* Two days after the Dahab triple bombings, on 04/26/2006, two suicide bombers with a car bomb, attacked the Multinational Force –MFO near Al-Jora. The two suicide bombers where identified as Salman Mohamed Saleem, 19, and Eid Hammad al-Tarawi, 25.

Salman Mohamed Saleem was the brother of Salman Salman Saleem and the cousin of Saleem Atallah Hussein El-Deuot, both were wanted for involvement in the Dahab bombings. Salman Salman Saleem and Saleem Atallah Hussein El-Deuot, were shot dead on 04/30/2006 by the Egyptian police.

Eid Hammad al-Tarawi’s uncle Eid Salama El-Tirawi was killed by the Egyptian police, along with Mounir Mohamed Moharib, a car thief, and Suleiman Salma El-Hamdin, a drug smuggler, on 05/01/2006, in the man hunt after the Dahab and Al-Jora perpetrators.  All three were Bedouins from Northern Sinai and their families implicated in the previous Taba and Sharm bombings.

* On 04/29/2006 the Egyptian police arrested in El-Arish two Palestinians, suspected of driving the car bomb and the Dahab bombing perpetrators from Northern Sinai to Dahab region.

* On 05/12/2006 four men wanted in connection with Dahab Triple Bombings and the Al-Jora attack surrendered to police. The four are:  Naif Ibrahim Saleh Ameira, Abdel Gadr Suweilim Suleiman, Ismail Salama Ouda Hussein and Hatem Musellem Rashid al-Atrash.

 

** “Al-Tawhid “ (the Unitarians) is an Islamic ideology that there is a unification of  Mohamed the prophet and God. Therefore the words and teaching of Mohamed are not an interpretation of Gods’ words but the words of God himself.

 

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