What's more, no Arabs have been blamed in the London attacks. Three Britons of Pakistani descent and a Briton of Jamaican descent were identified as the suspected suicide bombers in what has been seen as a "homegrown" operation.

The Red Sea resort city was believed to be one of the safest places in the country — a factor that would have made it harder to carry out any attack without surveillance, expertise and planning. The complication involved suggests the attacks were planned long ago.

"For an attack of this size and nature to happen in such a regionally important center destroys the image of its tight security and sends a clear message to authorities that they can be hit anywhere," said Dia'a Rashwan, an Egyptian terrorism expert. "We can't blame a small, amateurish group for this."

A strange twist in the Egyptian bombing investigation suggested that while all the attacks might not be related, some of them might be.

A new video by al-Qaida in Iraq showing an Egyptian envoy — who was kidnapped and later reportedly killed by the group — indicated a possible reason the Sinai town could have been targeted, saying Egypt lets Israelis "desecrate" the peninsula by giving them easy access.

The tape, which was not dated, shows Egyptian envoy Ihab al-Sherif answering questions about access by foreigners to tourist areas near Sharm el-Sheik. It does not mention Saturday's attacks in Egypt, but its release on the day of the bombings was noteworthy.

The spate of attacks in London and Egypt also could be seen as an attempt to demonstrate al-Qaida's prowess in the face of the U.S.-led war on terrorism, said Mustafa Alani, a security analyst at Dubai-based think-tank, the Gulf Research Center.

"They're saying this war is not winnable," Alani said. "If you look at the map of al-Qaida operations, they stretch from London to Bali to Istanbul to Mombasa to Saudi Arabia and Iraq."

The devastating blasts are likely meant as revenge for Western involvement in Iraq, Alani said, adding the message to Westerners is that "you are not safe anywhere as long as your government is involved in this unjust war."

In the longer term, the attackers seek to physically isolate Muslims and the West, Alani said. Some isolation will occur if the terrorists keep up their assaults.

"Americans will not go to the Middle East anymore. Europeans will find different destinations," he said. "And Middle Easterners will be very careful in going to the West."

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who chairs the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, told reporters the fresh attacks only underline the need to study the root causes of violence.

"The whole world is getting very disturbed. The frequency (of terrorist attacks) seems to be mounting," he said. "You just cannot tell these people (the terrorists) to stop."

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Contributing: Jim Krane in Dubai, UAE; Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan; and Maggie Michael and Paul Garwood in Cairo, Egypt.