Tag: Egypt

27 December 1993

Posted on by William Arkin

 

In Egypt, an attack on a bus in old Cairo wounds 16 Austrian and Egyptian tourists. Gama’a al-Islamiya (Islamic Group) claims responsibility. In September, the group warned tourists that they shouldn’t enter Qana province, which includes some of Egypt’s most famous sites. The first attack on tourists occurs a month later, killing one British national. Six more attacks on tourists—in Qana and Cairo—kill more than a dozen foreign tourists.

The Islamic Group’s “spiritual” leader is Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The group would claim responsibility for the multi-year campaign of tourist attacks, including the November 1997 attack at Luxor that killed 58 foreign tourists.

6 October 1981

Posted on by William Arkin
Sadat assassination

 

Egyptian president Anwar Sadat is assassinated while viewing a military parade celebrating the eighth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur war, when Egypt crossed the Suez Canal into the Sinai Peninsula.

As the two-hour parade is culminating with a flyover, a truck stops in front of the reviewing stand. Five soldiers shoot into the crowd of dignitaries and throw grenades, killing Sadat. The soldiers are often associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic group that is a legitimate political force in Egypt. In reality, they are followers of what would become Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Gama’a al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), the modern-day feeders of al Qaeda.

Some 300 Islamic radicals are arrested after the Sadat assassination, including Ayman al-Zawahiri, an English-speaking doctor, who would go on to become Osama bin Laden’s second and successor.

27 September 1996

Posted on by William Arkin

 

At Hurghada, a Red Sea resort in Egypt, two German tourists and two Egyptian nationals are killed as part of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s campaign against tourism.

On September 30, 1992, almost four years earlier, the Egyptian Islamic Group warned tourists not to enter Qena province, the location of some of Egypt’s most famous Pharaonic temples. The following day, terrorists opened fire on a Nile boat carrying over 100 German tourists, injuring three of the Egyptian crew. Between October 1, 1992 and the Hurghada attack, there were 18 additional attacks on tourism, most claimed by Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ).

Egyptian police cracked down on the Islamists and increased security around tourist sites. By the end of 1997, after a brutal terrorist attack in Luxor that killed 62 tourists, the campaign of terrorism directed at tourist sites ended. Zawahiri and the EIJ had by then begun to harmonize their attacks with al Qaeda’s global (and American) focus.

Terrorism directed at tourists was also nonexistent for seven years—until 2004, when Egyptian Red Sea villages where Israeli tourists dominated were attacked, killing 34 persons, mostly Israeli visitors. There has been a steady campaign of tourist attacks in Egypt since.