Egypt terror group threatens to attack tourists

Ansar Beit Al Maqdis has threatened to attack any tourists still in Egypt after February 20.

The Egyptian tourist bus that was bombed near the Taba crossing into Israel on February 16 in an attack claimed by the Sinai-based militant group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis. EPA

CAIRO // The Islamist militant group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis has told tourists to leave Egypt and threatened to attack anyone who stays in the country after a deadline of February 20.

The Sinai-based group, which claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed two South Korean tourists and an Egyptian on Sunday, made the statement on an affiliated Twitter account.

“We recommend tourists to get out safely before the expiry of the deadline,” read the tweet, written in English.

The warning has not appeared on the group’s official website but the Twitter account has been accurate in the past.

The group said in a statement posted on militant websites late Monday that one of its “heroes” carried out Sunday’s bombing in Taba.

“God helped your brothers in Ansar Beit Al Maqdis to assign one of its heroes to blow up the tourist bus that was heading to the Zionist entity (Israel) as part of our economic war attacks on this traitorous hireling regime, which plundered the nation’s wealth,” the statement said

Egyptian officials have called the attack a suicide bombing but the statement did not contain the usual phrasing, such as the word “martyr” or “God bless his soul” used in previous claims for attacks in which the bomber also died.

The statement lashed out at intensified Egyptian military operations in the Sinai Peninsula along the border with Israel targeting the militants’ hideouts and vehicles.

The Egyptian regime is “killing innocent people, imprisoning women, demolishing their houses, looting their properties and flattening the lands at the border with Zionist enemy as well as displacing their owners merely to please their Jewish masters and protect their alleged borders,” it said.

The Al Qaeda-inspired group has claimed responsibility for previous attacks but until now they have targeted primarily police and the military. The attacks have spiked after the military’s 2013 overthrow of Islamist president Mohammed Morsi, spreading to cities of the Nile Delta and the capital, Cairo.

The group claimed responsibility for downing a military helicopter in Sinai in late January, killing all five crew members and the assassination earlier this month of a senior interior ministry aide and carried out a powerful lorry bomb outside Cairo’s main security directorate.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified but it was posted on Al Qaida-affiliated websites.

The bombing on Sunday of a tourist bus marks a strategic shift to soft targets that could devastate an economy already reeling from political turmoil.

Egyptian prime minister Hazem El Beblawi said on Tuesday the Islamist militant group Ansar Beit Al Maqdis was a threat to tourists and aimed to undermined a political road map unveiled after an army takeover in July.

Also on Tuesday, Egypt’s public prosecutor charged two men it said were Israeli intelligence agents and two Egyptians with conspiring in Israel’s interests, according to a statement from the prosecutor’s office.

“The public prosecutor ordered Ramzy Mohamed, Sahar Ibrahim, Samuel Ben Zeev and David Wisemen — two officers in the Israeli Mossad — to be sent to a Cairo criminal court for spying for the interests of the state of Israel,” the statement read.

The two Egyptians are already in jail pending investigation, the statement said.

The public prosecutor ordered the arrest of the two Israeli officers. It was not clear from the statement if the Israelis were in Egypt. There was no immediate reaction from Israel.

The Egyptians are accused of providing information about Egypt to the Israeli officers with “the intent of damaging national interests in exchange for money and gifts and sex.”

It accuses Mohamed of “sleeping with women who work in Israeli intelligence.” The Egyptian is also accused of recruiting the accused woman, Ibrahim, to work for Israeli intelligence.

The statement said that the two Egyptians had admitted that they had “committed the crime of spying for Israel” during investigations.

* Reuters and Associated Press