Gunmen try to storm Egyptian hotel

The country’s tourism industry is in a parlous state after the attacks, with many tourists canceling travel to the region.

The interior ministry said two men who attacked a hotel where foreign tourists were staying in Hurghada yesterday were armed with knives, but not an explosive belt as reported earlier.

The BBC’s Sally Nabil in Cairo says Hurghada remains on high alert with all roads in and out closed off. Police forces are still searching for possible further attackers, she says.

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.

Police and security are ramped up outside a hotel where two attackers opened fire in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, Egypt, January 8, 2016.

The attack took place at the Bella Vista hotel in Hurghada, where several assailants entered through the restaurant attached to the property.

A gang of youths reportedly hurled “fireworks and birdshot” at the bus and at police guarding the Three Pyramids Hotel near the pyramids of Giza in Cairo.

“Everything happened so quickly”, said the wounded Swedish tourist, Sammie Olovsson.

Nine Egyptians were sentenced in November to life in prison for their involvement in that failed attack, while two others were jailed for seven years.

Egypt has been battling an insurgency based in the northern Sinai peninsula that grew following the 2013 military overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi.

The health ministry said they suffered knife wounds and were in stable condition.

It’s not clear how many many people were injured in the attack. They pointed the gun at him and stabbed his son in the neck.

Security sources said those tourists were Israeli Arabs. “In any case, such incidents can have extremely negative consequences for the Egyptian tourism and nullify all the efforts of the authorities to attract foreign tourists to the country”, he said, APA reports quoting TASS.

It also said one of the attackers was a student from the Cairo suburb of Giza.

Egypt’s tourist industry was decimated after the downing of a Russian passenger plane over Sinai in October.

Friday’s attack came just hours after the local Islamic State affiliate claimed responsibility for a shooting attack on a tourist bus outside a hotel near Egypt’s famous Giza pyramids the previous day.