Tourists Stabbed At Egyptian Beach Resort

An elderly Austrian couple and a young Swedish man were hospitalised after the assault Friday at the Bella Vista hotel in the Red Sea resort of Hurghada.

The Friday night attack on the Bella Vista Resort Hotel in the Red Sea beach town of Hurghada was an armed robbery attempt, and not a terrorist attack, Egypt’s Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou said on Saturday.

Police officers subsequently chased the assailants, arresting one, Egyptian police told Ma’an.

Egyptian officials said no-one was hurt in the attack, near Cairo.

The hotel added on Facebook that “two drugged young men” attacked the restaurant with a “fake gun” and “small knives”. Arab Israeli tourists were staying at the hotel, reports said.

The three injured European holidaymakers were said to be in a stable condition on Saturday.

The violence has spilled over to the Egyptian mainland since elected President Mohammed Morsi was toppled by the army in 2013, with attacks coming increasingly closer to the capital.

The account was in line with statements from the Egyptian Interior Ministry, which reportedly recorded the attack as a criminal offence, rather than terror attack, and said the men carried only knives and a “pellet gun”.

Mohammed Beram, a retired military officer living nearby who rushed to the scene to help, said the attacker who was killed was wearing an explosives vest.

Thursday’s Giza attack was also significant in that it targeted a hotel in Cairo, a heavily policed city of some 18 million residents, at a time when security appeared to relatively improve in recent months after a series of bomb attacks.

It’s not clear how many many people were injured in the attack.

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in a statement posted on messaging service, Telegram, the Reuters news agency reported.

Tourism is a cornerstone of the Egyptian economy but has been badly hit by years of political turmoil.

Here again this differed from the initial reporting, which said that the attackers were “waving black ISIS flags”.

After the Russian plane tragedy, major tourist operators suspended packages to Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada, while Russia halted all flights to and from Egypt and Britain suspended air links with Sharm el-Sheikh.

The tourism industry has been dealt several blows in 2015.