Gunman open fire on tourists at Egyptian resort

Egyptian officials have reported that two armed assailants attacked a hotel in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Hurghada on Friday, stabbing and wounding three foreign tourists.

It said security forces “confronted them as they tried to flee”, with one of them killed, a student in his 20s, and the other seriously wounded. The tourists were last night said to be in a stable condition.

Unconfirmed witness reports claimed the men were bearing an Isis flag as they approached from the beach in Hurghada, reportedly armed with knives, a “gun” and explosives belt, and there was speculation they were attempting to kidnap tourists. No one was hurt in the Thursday attack.

The incident further threatened efforts to fix the country’s damaged tourism industry, coming a day after a Cairo hotel hosting Israeli tourists came under attack by men who hurled fireworks and fired birdshot.

No tourists were injured in yesterday’s attack and Egyptian authorities said the attack was aimed at security forces.

The Sinai branch of ISIS claimed responsibility soon after, even posting pictures of the bomb they claim brought down the plane.

The Hurghada attack is a risky precedent since Egypt’s Red Sea resorts have done better than elsewhere in the country in withering the slump suffered by the vital tourism sector in the five years of turmoil since a popular uprising topped longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak.

The men sneaked into a restaurant belonging to the Bella Vista hotel and started randomly stabbing tourists, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said in a statement. “I myself had the gun pointed at me three times, and Sammie was stabbed with the knife”. Egypt, which has fought several wars with Israel, is one of only two Arab nations, along with Jordan, to have signed a peace treaty with the Jewish state.

One traffic police officer and a soldier were killed on Saturday morning in the attack targeted their vehicle in Giza on the outskirts of capital Cairo, State-run MENA news agency reported.

IS has an affiliate based in the Sinai Peninsula, known as Sinai Province.

Most were tourists returning home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.