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© Copyright
Reuters Limited & U.S. Dive Travel Network.
CHRONOLOGY
OF ATTACKS
on TOURIST TARGETS IN EGYPT:
a DETAILED HISTORY from 1992 to the PRESENT.
(Derived from copyrighted reports
by REUTERS,
the internationally respected British News Agency.
Reprinted with specific permission from the NYC Bureau.)
Following are notable incidents in the failed Moslem militant campaign to permanently cripple Egypt's lucrative tourist industry. History shows that the vast majority of tourists who visit Egypt for any reason, at any time of year, & to any locale, find their experience to be magical, exotic & a great adventure. Terrorism against live-aboard vessels on the Red Sea has been virtually non-existent, knowledgeable sources indicate.
We include this file not to meddle in your private vacation plans, nor to instill needless anxiety, but because U.S. Dive Travel strongly feels you need to study the issue of personal safety in Egypt before making an informed decision about whether to travel to this beautiful but troubled region. And the only way to be informed is to separate fact from rumor, history from fearful speculation.
Your safety & personal
security are far more important to this company
than any other aspect of your booking. Please read this
important text completely & feel free to call your agent at
U.S. Dive Travel if you have any questions. Thank
you for taking the time. God bless you
& your trip! Be careful & chances are excellent you will
have one of the most exciting & visually gratifying scuba vacations
possible on planet Earth.
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
2004
2005
2008
2009
2011
2012, 2013
2014
Feb. 19, 2014 (Wed.) BBC & EuroNews dispatches:
The Islamist militant unit calling itself Ansar Bayt
al-Maqdis has warned tourists to leave Egypt “before it’s too late” and
threatened to attack anyone who stays in the country after a deadline of
February 20. The Sinai-Peninsula-based
group, which assumed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed two South
Korean tourists and an Egyptian bus driver on Feb. 16, made the statement on a Twitter
account.
The attack against the bus, which was heading to Israel
from St. Catherine’s Monastery, a popular tourist destination in the south
Sinai, was the first assault on foreign tourists since President Mohamed Mursi
was driven out of power last summer by the Egyptian military – which sparked an
Islamist insurgency. Islamist militancy
has escalated dramatically in Egypt this winter, including the largely lawless
region adjoining Israel and the Gaza Strip, since the army deposed Islamist
Mursi in July, following mass protests against his rule.
Since then the army has launched a wide-scale operation in
Sinai targeting Islamist militants, and security forces launched a crackdown on
Islamists and Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood which authorities labelled a terrorist
organisation. The Brotherhood denies any
links to violence. The attack marks a
shift in strategy among Sinai’s militants to targeting “softer” tourist and
economic targets. Egypt’s vital tourism industry has already been hit hard by
three years of political turmoil and street protests.
Islamist terrorist commandos launch near-daily attacks on
security forces in northern Sinai, while the south, with its many Red Sea
resorts, had been seen as a relatively safe tourist destination, government
officials said. Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has
claimed responsibility for several bombings, including an attempt to kill the
interior minister in Cairo last year. The
organization also said it was behind a missile attack on a military helicopter
last month that killed five soldiers.
CAIRO / Sept. 13,
2015 — The Associated Press reported today that Egyptian special
forces who were pursuing Islamic militants in the country’s western desert
mistakenly opened fire on Mexican tourists who were on a safari, killing 12 unarmed
civilians and setting back the country’s efforts to revive its faltering
tourism.
Egyptian
officials said the group had no formal permits to be in the area, but have not released
a complete account of Sunday’s incident, in which another 10 people were
wounded. Mexico’s President Enrique Pena
Nieto condemned the attack and called for a full investigation. And Claudia Ruiz Massieu, Mexico’s foreign
minister, said stunned survivors told officials they were attacked by
helicopters and other aircraft.
The incident, among
the worst attacks on tourists ever in Egypt, occurred while the government is
desperately trying to rekindle tourist flow, which has waned since the 2011
uprising that brought down President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt has mainly
been battling insurgents in the northern Sinai Peninsula, on the other side of
the country, where Islamic militants stepped up attacks on security forces
after the military ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013 amid large-scale
protests against his rule.
But in recent
months militants loyal to the Islamic State have carried out a series of brutal
attacks in Egypt, including the bombing of the Italian Consulate in Cairo plus
kidnapping and beheading a Croatian oil surveyor who was working in the
capital.
Mona el-Bakri,
the spokeswoman for the Dar al-Fouad hospital where the wounded were being
treated, said two of the seven Mexicans receiving treatment also hold American
citizenship. A State Department official said an American woman was injured.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, declined to say more because
the woman had not waived her privacy rights.
According to
Associated Press, Egypt’s Interior Ministry said in a statement that a joint
military-police force was pursuing “terrorist elements” in the area and fired
on four vehicles that turned out to be carrying tourists. The ministry said the
victims were Egyptian and Mexican. Egyptian
authorities claim the safari convoy had
wandered into a restricted area without formal permission.
All 224 people on a Russian jetliner were killed today when an Airbus A321 crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula shortly after takeoff from the popular Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm El-Sheikh, officials reported. Shortly after the plane went down, the terror group ISIS took credit for planning & executing the crash. The Metrojet flight, carrying 217 passengers and seven crew, was en route from Sharm to St. Petersburg, Russia when it plummeted off radar screens & crashed in a remote desert sector, only 23 minutes into the doomed flight.
This was the air accident with heaviest death toll in the history of Russian aviation, surpassing even a 1985 disaster in Uzbekistan in which 200 people died, the Russian-run news agency RIA reported. "Unfortunately, all passengers of flight 7K9268 Sharm el-Sheikh-Petersburg were killed," The Russian embassy in Cairo said, in Russian, on Twitter. "We express our condolences to the family and friends." Egyptian officials said the 7-person crew and 214 of the passengers and all of the crew were Russian and that three of the passengers were Ukrainian, RT.com reported. The victims included 17 children, aged 2 to 17, according to Russian authorities.
At least 16 people were killed and five more injured in an explosive Molotov Cocktail attack on a nightclub near Cairo, the Egyptian capital, according to the country's state-run news agency, MENA. The attack, with hand-made fire-bombs, took place early Friday morning, MENA said. This club is in the Agouza neighborhood in Egypt's Giza governorate on the outskirts of Cairo, on the western bank of the Nile River. That suburb is favored by a significant number of foreign nationals. State-run Al-Ahram reported that masked assailants attacked the nightclub, and the Egyptian prosecutor and police are currently investigating. Defying all credible logic, and widely dismissed by news pundits worldwide, Egypt's state-run Nile TV reported that authorities say the attackers' motive was criminal and not related to terrorism.
2017
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