CAIRO – An Egyptian man stabbed two German tourists to death and wounded four others on Friday at a popular seaside vacation spot on the Red Sea, after apparently searching out foreigners to attack, officials and witnesses said.
The knifeman killed the two German women and wounded two other tourists at the Zahabia hotel in Hurghada, then swam to a neighbouring beach to attack at least two more people at the Sunny Days El Palacio resort before being caught by staff and arrested, officials and security sources said.
It was the first major attack on foreign tourists since a similar assault on the same resort more than a year ago, and comes as Egypt struggles to revive a tourism industry hurt by security threats and years of political upheaval.
“He had a knife with him and stabbed each of them three times in the chest. They died on the beach,” the security manager at the El Palacio hotel, Saud Abdelaziz, told Reuters.
“He jumped a wall between the hotels and swam to the other beach.”
Abdelaziz said two of the injured were Czech and two Armenian, but other officials said one of the women was Russian. They were being treated a local hospital. The Czech Foreign Ministry tweeted that one Czech woman had sustained a minor leg injury.
The German Foreign Ministry said it had no definite information, but could not rule out that German citizens were among the victims. The German Embassy in Cairo was working closely with the authorities, a ministry spokesman said.
The attacker’s motive was still under investigation, the Interior Ministry said. (Reuters)
