Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Saudi Arabia and Jordan Coordinating with Egyptian Security | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Amman, Asharq Al-Awsat- Security agencies in Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are coordinating their efforts in order to trace back the terrorists’ course of action, following Monday’s bombing attack in Sinai’s Dahab.

The Egyptian security forces are exchanging intelligence information with Jordan and Saudi Arabia in an effort to reveal how the weapons and explosives were smuggled into Dahab.

At least twenty four people were killed and dozens injured when three suicide bombers detonated explosive belts they were carrying on their bodies.

Ten people have already been arrested according to security sources, and efforts are now focused on tracking down those behind the attack.

Meanwhile, Jordan is intensifying its security measures in the coastal city of ‘Aqaba, which lies only a few kilometers from Sinai.

Egypt accuses a group called Tawhid wal Jihad (Unification and holy war) of carrying out the July 2005 Sharm el-Sheikh attacks that killed some 70 people and multiple bombings further up the coast that left 34 dead in October 2004.

Tawhid wal Jihad was the name of Islamic extremist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s organisation before it was renamed Al-Qaeda in Iraq in late 2004.

Adly said security reinforcements were dispatched to Sinai, a vast desert and mountainous expanse inhabited mainly by Bedouin tribes.

Previous attacks in Sinai were followed by tough crackdowns and thousands of arrests in the peninsula.

The Dahab attacks came a day before Sinai Liberation Day, a public holiday which celebrates Israel’s 1982 withdrawal from the peninsula, in what many analysts saw as evidence that the perpetrators were from a local group with an Egyptian agenda.

The Sharm el-Sheikh and October 2004 attacks also were timed to coincide with key dates in Egyptian history.

The most common hypothesis put forward by security experts and commentators is that of a new home-grown Islamist cell, that could be an Al-Qaeda “franchise” without necessarily receiving direct support from Osama bin Laden’s network.

Preliminary findings from the investigation revealed that the bombs used in the Dahab attacks were rudimentary and made with materials locally available.

However, the top-selling state-owned daily Al-Ahram quoted security sources as saying that the same group responsible for the Sinai bombings were planning attacks against Israelis and Americans in Iraq.

Investigators have been running DNA tests to match body parts with ID cards found on the scene of some of the explosions.

In other developments, security sources and witnesses said that unidentified individuals attacked Wednesday a police post in Belbeis, northeast of Cairo, causing no injuries.

However, the interior ministry issued a statement denying the incident had happened.

The Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite news network also carried the report and its Cairo correspondent was later arrested in Dahab. Hussein Abdel Ghani was due to be questioned in Cairo on Thursday.