Egypt police face scrutiny after increase in terror attacks

A bombing that killed three South Korean tourists and an Egyptian bus driver highlights the failings of Egypt's police force. Nadine Marroushi reports from Cairo

An Egyptian policeman stands guard from an armoured vehicle outside the venue of the trial of the ousted Islamist president Mohammed Morsi on February 16. Khaled Desouki / AFP

Foreign Correspondent

CAIRO // Egyptian police were under fire on Monday for their inability to prevent an increase in violence across the country following a bombing in the Sinai Peninsula that left three tourists dead.

Three South Korean tourists and their Egyptian bus driver died in the blast near a border crossing with Israel on Sunday.

The uptick in violence poses a significant danger to Egypt’s stability ahead of elections this year and also threatens the country’s struggling tourism industry.

The latest bombing reveals the failures of the Egyptian police force, said Ashraf El Sherif, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo.

“The police needs to be restructured not just from a democratic point of view but from a professional and institutional point of view, in order to be able to counter terrorism, which they haven’t proven capable of doing so far,” Mr El Sherif said.

Seventeen people were also injured in the bombing, which authorities on Monday said was the work of a suicide bomber. It was the first attack to target tourists in Egypt since an upswing in violence across the country after the July 3 removal of president Mohammed Morsi by Egypt’s army, after a wave of mass protests calling for his resignation.

The attack recalls Egypt’s Islamist insurgency in the 1990s, in which militants attacked security forces, Christians and tourists. It culminated in the 1997 Luxor massacre in which gunmen killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians. The two most prominent militant groups during this period were Gamaa Islamiya and the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Egypt was hit by another wave of terrorist attacks between 2004 and 2009. In 2004, a bombing at Taba killed 34 people, including Israeli tourists. In 2005, at least 88 people were killed when a bomb ripped through the Red Sea resort town of Sharm El Sheikh. In 2006, at least 30 tourists were killed when three bombs hit the seaside town of Dahab. Authorities blamed the attacks on Palestinian Islamists.

In 2009, a 17-year-old French girl was killed and 20 others wounded in a bombing at Cairo’s landmark Khan El Khalili bazaar.

Egypt now faces an increased threat of terrorism from Islamist militants based in Sinai and elsewhere, whose targets before the Taba bombing included Egyptian security forces as well as Israel through cross-border attacks and the bombing of Egypt’s natural-gas pipeline to Israel and Jordan.

The most prominent militant group is Ansar Beit Al Maqdis, which has in recent months claimed responsibility for shooting down an Egyptian army helicopter using a surface-to-air missile, the bombing of Egypt’s police headquarters in Cairo and the assassination of a senior policeman.

“The Taba attack signifies a new stage, and we’re expecting more violence towards civilians and terrorist attacks in general, especially in the run-up to the presidential elections,” said Ihab Youssef, head of the Cairo-based security consultancy Risk Free Egypt and a former counterterrorism police officer.

“We are very concerned about the policies and procedures that are in place to secure the tourist industry in Egypt,” Mr Youssef said. “It’s been three years since the revolution and there have been no changes to convert the interior ministry into an institutional way of thinking.”

The bus was carrying 32 tourists, all members of the same church group from the central South Korean county of Jincheon, who were on a 12-day trip to Turkey, Egypt and Israel. The bus was travelling from St Catherine’s Monastery, a popular tourist destination in South Sinai, to nearby Israel when it was attacked.

No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The incident occurred as Egypt is trying to revive its tourism industry, which has suffered amid continued bouts of violence since the 2011 uprising that removed Egypt’s former president Hosni Mubarak.

“The tourism industry has been hard hit since 2011 with all the political turbulence,” said Mohammed Abu Basha, an economist at Cairo-based investment bank EFG Hermes.

Mr Abu Basha said the tourism industry had started to make a small comeback but “we’re not putting much hope on any sort of meaningful recovery in the sector for the next couple of years”.

* with additional reporting by the Associated Press