Two Ukrainian tourists killed in stabbing attack at Egyptian resort

Four other foreigners injured by attacker who swam ashore from a nearby beach

The Red Sea in Hurghada, a popular Egyptian resort where Laura Plummer was planning on spending two weeks on holiday with her partner Omar. AP / Hassan Ammar

CAIRO // Two Ukrainian tourists were killed and four other foreigners wounded by an attacker with a knife at an Egyptian Red Sea holiday resort on Friday.

The man was arrested and the motive for the attack is under investigation, the interior ministry said.

The attacker swam from a nearby public beach to the holiday resort in Hurghada, some 400 kilometres south of Cairo, the ministry said.

Security and hospital sources said two Ukrainian women were killed. Other victims were taken to hospital. Their nationalities were not immediately known.

Hurghada is one of Egypt's most popular beach resorts, especially with Ukrainians and European tourists.

The head of the consular department of Ukraine's foreign ministry, Vasil Kyrylych, declined to comment pending official information from Egypt.

Egypt's security forces are fighting an extremist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula and militants have carried out attacks in the past on the tourism industry.

Security has been boosted in tourist resorts around the country, as the industry provides Egypt with much needed revenues.

In January 2016, two assailants armed with a gun, a knife and a suicide belt landed on the beach of a hotel in Hurghada, wounding two foreign tourists.

An ISIL bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort in 2015 killed all 224 people on board and decimated the country's tourism sector.

Russia suspended all flights to Egypt in response and has yet to resume them.