3 foreigners injured in Egypt hotel attack

According to the Egyptian government, three foreigners were injured in the attack – one from Sweden and two from Austria – and they were rushed to the hospital.

Its jihadists are mainly active in the Sinai Peninsula, where they claimed to have bombed a Russian passenger plane with 224 people on board in October, and have also claimed responsibility for attacks in Cairo, the western desert and Nile delta. The ministry identified the stabbing victims as two Swedes and an Austrian, but the Interior Ministry said they were two Austrians and a Swede.

Police opened fire killing the attacker, who security sources told Reuters was wearing a suicide belt.

The incident comes a day after gunmen opened fire on Israeli tourists as they boarded a bus in Cairo.

A member of hotel staff, reportedly speaking anonymously, said he had dragged a female tourist in the lobby while holding a knife to her neck when he was shot by a poice officer.

At least three tourists have been stabbed outside a hotel at an Egyptian beach resort by militants who arrived by boat, security sources say.

Both attackers were killed by security forces after a shootout, state television reported.

A local Islamic State affiliate in Egypt has said it was responsible.

British Minister for Middle East and North Africa Tobias Ellwood has praised Egypt’s “prompt” response to the attack on a hotel in the Red Sea resort city of Hurghada.

All three attackers have been killed by Egyptian security forces. The attackers were found to be carrying a “sound pistol” and knives, said the official statement.

Since then, important tourist operators have eliminated packages to Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, and Russian Federation itself cancelled all flights to and from Egypt.

Police said they were Arab-Israeli tourists, and the assailants had targeted policemen outside the hotel and not the tourists.

Tourism is important to the Egyptian market as a way to obtain hard currency, but has been ravaged by years of political chaos considering that the revolution that ousted veteran president Hosni Mubarak.

“On Friday night unknown men infiltrated the Hotel Bella Vista in Hurghada through the restaurant overlooking the street and threatened guests with knives”, said a Interior Ministry spokesman.