TERRORISM - 2006

Just one day after Osama bin Laden issued another chilling message, last night's bombings in Egypt will inevitably revive the suspicions voiced by Washington that al-Qaida tapes sometimes contain coded instructions for terrorists.

However, it is easy to see why local militants, of their own accord, might have decided to strike in Egypt last night. It was holiday time - the Coptic Christian Easter - when many enjoy a seaside break in Sinai. It was also the eve of Sinai Liberation Day, which marks the return of lands captured by Israel: returned under the peace treaty for which former president Anwar Sadat paid with his life.

If the timing was obvious, so was the target. For years, terrorists in Egypt have sought to attack the tourism industry on which the country depends for much of its foreign earnings.

Two attacks in 1997 - a massacre outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and at Luxor in southern Egypt - wreaked havoc with tourism, but also angered many Egyptians who depend on the trade for their livelihoods, forcing the Islamists to call a truce. After a lull of seven years, attacks resumed in 2004 with the Taba bombings in Sinai, which killed 34 people, including Israeli tourists. Last July, a series of bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, on the southern tip of Sinai, killed at least 64 people, again mainly tourists.

The Egyptian authorities said the militants who carried out the bombings were locals without international connections, though security agencies have said they suspect al-Qaida.

Attacks on tourist resorts have not been limited to Egypt. Al-Qaida has been blamed for targeting tourist resorts around the world in a campaign of bombings. In October 2002 a series of bombs exploded outside the Sari nightspot in Kuta Beach, a nightclub district of Bali in Indonesia. A total of 202 people, including 26 Britons, were killed and 132 injured.

The following month a bomb at the Israeli-owned Paradise hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, killed 16 and injured 40, minutes after two missiles narrowly missed an Israeli holiday jet that had just taken off from the city's airport. Al-Qaida claimed responsibility

In May 2003 bombers set off at least five explosions in Casablanca, Morocco, which hit a Spanish restaurant, a five-star hotel and a Jewish community centre, killing 45 people, including 12 bombers, and wounding about 60.

Then in November 2005, three suicide bombings at hotels in Amman killed 57 people, most of them Jordanians attending wedding parties. Three Americans were also killed. An al-Qaida website claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Al-Qaida itself grew in part out of Egyptian extremist groups, and many of its key figures are, or have been, Egyptians. They include Bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the late Muhammad Atef, as well as Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers.

Many regard Zawahiri, who was jailed in Egypt for his role in the assassination of President Sadat in 1981, as the brains behind many of al-Qaida's deadliest operations.

In the latest wave of bombings the Egyptian authorities have tended to make reassuring noises, though their general approach suggests a lack of precise intelligence. In the wake of the Taba incident they rounded up thousands of people for questioning. Four months later, according to Human Rights Watch, as many as 2,400 detainees were still being held.

by: http://www.guardian.co.uk/egypt/story/0,,1760842,00.html