CAIRO // Two policemen were shot dead near Cairo on Saturday, a day after three European holidaymakers were wounded by a knifeman at a hotel in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
The two policemen were killed while on their way to work in the Giza district and an elderly Austrian couple and a young Swedish man were taken to hospital after being stabbed on Friday at the Bella Vista hotel.
ISIL claimed the attack on the policemen, saying its gunmen shot dead an Egyptian police colonel and a conscript west of Cairo.
Meanwhile, police shot dead one of the knife-wielding attackers at the hotel and wounded another man, saying one of them was also carrying a “sound gun”.
The three injured European holidaymakers were said to be in a stable condition on Saturday. Egypt’s tourism minister, Hisham Zazou, said the assailants appeared to have been acting alone, saying they were “not part of an organisation”.
Mr Zazou said the initial finding was that it was “an individually motivated attack, ”while the hotel described them as “drugged young men”.
A witness recounted how the assailants burst into the hotel and stabbed guests.
A Swedish man who identified himself as the father of one of the victims, 27-year-old Sammie Olousson, said they were sitting in the hotel restaurant when the assailants burst in and stabbed his son.
“My son and me were eating in the restaurant and having a discussion,” he said in the Hurghada hospital.
The two men rushed into the restaurant “very fast”, he said. “They took knives and they tried to get Sammie here,” he said, pointing to his chest.
“Then they said ‘down on the floor’ and we do that,” he said, adding that he told his son, who was bleeding, not to move.
“I get up two times and they stayed there with the guns. When I got up later on they were not here,” he said, speaking in English.
On its Facebook page, the hotel posted pictures of the two other victims, named in hospital records as Renata Weisslen and Wilhem Weislan, both smiling.
“They are OK now. God bless them. God bless Egypt,” it said in a post. A doctor at the hospital said they were a couple, both 72.
A video published by Egyptian news websites appeared to show the wounded assailant receiving emergency medical treatment and being questioned on his identity. He appeared to have been shot in both legs.
Mr Zazou described the assailants as “amateurish” and said their motive was not yet clear.
“If someone wants to claim that this is part of a terrorist group, it is a bit amateurish for that,” he said.
The Bella Vista hotel said on its Facebook page that “two drugged young men attacked one of our hotel restaurants [Out of the hotel territory] with fake gun [plastic] and small knives”.
The incident further threatened efforts to repair the country’s damaged tourism industry, coming a day after a Cairo hotel hosting Israeli tourists came under attack by men who hurled fireworks and fired birdshot.
ISIL’s Egypt affiliate is waging an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, and dealt a body blow to the country’s tourism industry by claiming to have downed a Russian airliner in October, killing all the holidaymakers on board.
The attack prompted Russia to suspend flights to and from Egypt, while Britain restricted flights to the Sharm El Sheikh resort from where the doomed plane had departed.
After the Russian plane tragedy, some major tourist operators suspended packages to Sharm El Sheikh and Hurghada.
The resorts, which Egypt promoted as jewels of its tourism industry, had previously attracted millions of holidaymakers, including Russians, Britons and Italians, and are famed for their pristine beaches and scuba diving.
The country’s tourism industry was dealt several heavy blows in 2015.
In September, eight Mexican tourists were mistakenly killed by Egyptian security forces in the vast Western Desert.
In June, police foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack near the famed Karnak temple in Luxor – one of Egypt’s most popular heritage attractions – when 600 tourists were inside.
Nine Egyptians were sentenced in November to life in prison for their involvement in the failed attack, while two others were jailed for seven years.
* Associated Press, Agence France-Presse
