Three bombings rock Egypt's Sinai resrot city of Dahab: 24 killed

Shards of glass and bloody body parts littered the ground Tuesday as Egypt reeled from a three-bomb attack that ripped apart a Sinai beach resort promenade at the height of Egypt's tourist season, killing at least 24 people, including a German child. More than 60 others were hurt.

Photo: Three bombings rock Egypt's Sinai resrot city of Dahab: 24 killed

It was the third terror strike on a Sinai resort in less than two years, and once again, it happened as Egyptians were enjoying a national holiday.

Security police in Sinai said they had arrested three people near Dahab, but did not yet know if the explosions, timed for maximum destruction along the promenade of bars, restaurants and shops on the holiday evening, were caused by suicide bombers or bombs on timers.

As Egyptian police sifted the wreckage for clues, an Israeli official predicted the Sinai resorts, popular with both Western and Israeli tourists and Egyptians, would continue to be a prime target for Islamic extremists.

The blasts were so powerful that police divers worked Tuesday morning to retrieve body parts from the shallow waters of the sea. At one spot near the beach, two black sandals lay in a pool of blood on a wooden footbridge.

Nearby, outside the supermarket where one blast occurred, a tiny shoe covered in blood lay on top of a baby stroller. Witnesses said the stroller belonged to foreign twin infants who they said looked European.

One twin was inside the shop with the mother when the blast occurred, and the other outside in the stroller, said Mohammed Emad, 16, who sells spices at the market and whose hand was hurt by flying glass.

The boy said he went with the mother and twins to hospital, where one of the twins died and the mother remained severely injured. "I pushed the stroller away out of the doorway" after the blast, he said, reports the AP.

I.L.