Terrorists likely entered resort in bomb-laden trucks

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt — The bombers who carried out Egypt's worst-ever terrorist attack appear to have entered this Red Sea resort in pickup trucks loaded with explosives that were hidden under vegetables, security officials said Sunday. Police were searching for three suspects believed to have survived the bombings.

One truck headed for the luxury Ghazala Gardens hotel. There, one man planted a bomb in a suitcase in a parking lot, while another slammed the vehicle into the Ghazala hotel's reception area, the security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the investigation.

As people fled the Ghazala attack, the suitcase exploded and killed at least seven people, said the officials.

A second truck, on a road leading to another major hotel, got stuck in traffic in the Old Market — an area frequented by Egyptian workers in the resort area on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. Two militants inside abandoned the vehicle, apparently setting a timer, and the blast detonated soon after, the officials said.

Before the attacks, the militants rubbed serial numbers off the trucks' engines, the officials said. Such serial numbers had been a key clue Egyptian investigators had used to track down those behind similar vehicle bombings last October against two resorts further north in the Sinai Peninsula, Taba and Ras Shitan.

According to local hospitals, Saturday's pre-dawn bombings killed at least 88 people — both Egyptians and foreigners; Egypt's Health Ministry put the death toll at 64. Hospitals said the ministry count does not include a number of sets of body parts.

One official said he believed the man who planted the suitcase came separately, not in the attack truck, and he said police were looking for more than three people, though he would not elaborate.

Investigators were also examining whether the suicide bomber who set off the blast at the Ghazala was one of five suspects still at large from the October bombings.

With fears the attacks will devastate one of the strongest engines of the vital tourism industry, some 1,000 foreigners and Egyptians who work in Sharm el-Sheik marched down its main hotel strip chanting slogans against terrorism in English, Arabic, Italian and German.

Decked out in surf trunks, dive-shop T-shirts and hotel uniforms, they vowed the long flourishing resort would survive. The march passed workers still sweeping up shattered glass in front of the Ghazala, where the reception lobby was flattened by one of two truck bombs used in Saturday's pre-dawn attacks.