At least 26 people have been killed after bomb attacks in Egyptian Red Sea resorts packed with Israeli tourists, sending thousands fleeing home across the border. Israel said it suspected al-Qaeda was behind the attacks.
The toll looks certain to rise today. Israeli officials said dozens were missing and bodies remained buried in the rubble of the Taba Hilton, on Egypt's border with Israel, after a truck bomb sheared off a 10-storey wing of the luxury hotel.
The attack was followed by blasts at two backpacker beaches further south on the Sinai Peninsula, crowded with Israelis vacationing during a week-long Jewish holiday despite official warnings they might be targeted by Islamic militants.
The explosions were the first major attacks on tourists in Egypt since 58 foreigners were killed in Luxor in 1997.
At least 19 of the dead in yesterday's blasts were Israelis, an Israeli newspaper website said. Six Egyptians were among the dead, Israel Radio reported, and one Russian was killed. Italian authorities said two Italian sisters were among the missing.
Some 120 people were wounded as normally placid vacation spots were plunged into nightmares of smoke, blood and screams.
A truck loaded with explosives rammed into the lobby of the 430-room hotel. Some guests fell to their deaths. Moments later, a suicide bomber detonated another blast near the swimming pool.
"There were a lot of people on the ground. We couldn't tell in the chaos if they were dead or not," said Israeli Ronit Levi, who had been a hotel guest. "It was mayhem."
Firefighters said the ceiling of the hotel dining room, where tables were set for dinner, had collapsed and that bodies could be seen under rubble in the ruins of the hotel.
Thousands of dazed, frightened holidaymakers streamed back over the border into Israel, among them an unconscious child and a young woman, her arm wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage.
"There will be will be no compromising with terror. It will be fought with every means possible without restraint," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vowed during an emergency cabinet meeting.
In the aftermath, Israel complained of delays in Egyptian approval for heavy equipment to be brought over the border for the search. But a compromise was reached and Israeli cranes moved in and began lifting massive pieces of broken concrete.
A previously unknown pro-al Qaeda Islamist group called Islamic Tawhid Brigades claimed responsibility for the blast on a website. The claim, along with one from another unknown group calling itself the World Islamist Group, could not be verified.
But Israel's deputy Defence Minister Zeev Boim told reporters the attack appeared to be the work of "international terror groups like al-Qaeda or branches of it".
Experts agreed, saying the choice of "soft targets" and the use of co-ordinated attacks bore the hallmarks of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
An audiotape attributed last week to al Qaeda's deputy leader called for attacks against Israel and "crusader America".
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said it was too early to say who had carried out the resort attacks, but an Egyptian security source said they followed the pattern of militant Islamic groups.
"We are working on the assumption that an al Qaeda-related group carried out the car bombings," said the source. Israeli tourists were the targets of a November 2002 al Qaeda bombing of a hotel in Kenya in which 15 people died.
Hamas, the main Palestinian faction behind suicide attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis inside the Jewish state and in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, denied any role in the Egyptian explosions.
But a Hamas cleric in the West Bank city of Nablus told a rally where hundreds chanted for more bombings: "God has avenged the Palestinian cause in the attack in Taba by Egyptian heroes."