Egyptian Forces Kill Foreign Tourists In Mexico

The group of 22 tourists was travelling in the White Desert, a rolling plane of sandy dunes and wind-beaten stone when security forces opened fire on them, killing 12 people and wounding 10.

But they have not offered a full account of Sunday’s incident, in which another 10 people were wounded.

The convoy was made up of four four-wheel drive vehicles, the Egyptian Interior Ministry, said in a statement, and there would be an investigation into how and why the tourists entered an off-limits area. The tourist vehicles lacked necessary permits and failed to inform authorities about their presence in the region, added Rasha Azazi, a spokesperson for the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism.

The Mexican government on Monday demanded an explanation for an apparently mistaken attack by Egyptian forces that killed 12 members of a tourist convoy in the desert southwest of Cairo.

It said the tourists had been in an “off-limits” area, but did not give an exact location.

The Mexican ambassador to Egypt visited five other nationals being treated at the Dar al-Fouad hospital in Giza, a southwestern Cairo suburb, where they were listed in stable condition, according to the secretariat.

President Enrique Pena Nieto said 14 Mexicans were among those involved in Sunday’s “grave incident” in the Western Desert.

The Mexican Ambassador in Egypt Jorge Álvarez Fuentes has personally interviewed the six hospitalized Mexican citizens.

Usually having for target the police and the army in retaliation for the repression, some groups affiliated with ISIS seem to have changed strategy by conducting attacks in the West, hoping, according to experts, to touch the government portfolio by scaring tourists and foreign investors.

The country’s Foreign Ministry said it was still trying to identify them.

After launching spectacular attacks targeting security forces in its North Sinai bastion over the past two years, militants are increasingly adopting tactics similar to the main IS group in Iraq and Syria. But the group did not receive any warnings that the area they were passing through was restricted from any of the military checkpoints they had passed, or from their police escort. “You can’t have a tourism agency, or even be a tourist guide, without a government license”, she said, adding that her brother Rafael had also been to Egypt before.

The Islamic State in Egypt said in a statement that it had “resisted a military operation in the Western Desert” on Sunday, but provided no other details.

The Islamist insurgency gained momentum after the country’s military, led by Abdel-Fatteh El-Sisi who now serves as Egypt’s president, overthrew his predecessor, Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, in mid-2013 after mass protests broke out against his rule.