Luxor4u

An Egyptian armed group on Monday claimed responsibility for a deadly tourist bus blast in the Sinai resort city of Taba and gave tourists in the country four days to leave or they would be targeted.

"As we promised, what's next is more bitter. By God's grace, a [tourist] bus was targeted and exploded in Taba," Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said via Twitter. "We would continue to target [regime's] leaders and economy, [especially] tourism and gas sectors," the group added.

The group also gave all tourists in Egypt four days to leave safely "or you don't have no one else but yourselves to blame."

The Sunday tourist bus blast killed three Korean tourists and the Egyptian driver.

The blast is the first to target the tourist industry, a main foreign currency generator for Egypt, which has been suffering political uncertainty since the army's July 3 ouster of elected president Mohamed Morsi.

Tourists were last targeted in Egypt in 2009 when a bomb went off in a tourist market in al-Hussein district in the heart of Fatimid Cairo.

The attack killed a female French tourist and injured 25 other tourists of different nationalities.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis has claimed several deadly attacks against Egyptian army and security forces, including a failed September assassination attempt on the life of Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim.

Sinai has been at the center of heightened violence against police and army personnel since the July 3 ouster of Morsi, Egypt's first freely-elected leader.

Source: http://www.worldbulletin.net/world/1290 ... t-tourists

DJKeefy wrote:
"As we promised, what's next is more bitter. By God's grace, a [tourist] bus was targeted and exploded in Taba," Ansar Beit al-Maqdis said via Twitter.

'By God's Grace' NO! This is written by and played out by people who have no understanding of God's Grace. They have turned their back on him and are just living out a huge, dangerous lie.

I'm sorry to say but I am going to pull an A4 here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33812&#p388261

That said, they actually said tourists have to leave Sinai within 4 days, not Egypt.

Glyphdoctor wrote:I'm sorry to say but I am going to pull an A4 here:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33812&#p388261

That said, they actually said tourists have to leave Sinai within 4 days, not Egypt.

Only Sinai? Well that's a relief......only half the tourists here then.

DJKeefy wrote:The group also gave all tourists in Egypt four days to leave safely "or you don't have no one else but yourselves to blame."

Glyphdoctor wrote:
That said, they actually said tourists have to leave Sinai within 4 days, not Egypt.

Am I misreading or misunderstanding something? The reports I've read have been as quoted above i.e. leave Egypt, not Sinai specific.

Better alter my Booking for next week, somewhere safer and quieter, Like Syria....
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Looks Like I'm not swimming with Dolphin's next week in the Red Sea, so I'm off to join a Caravan.. Peace and LOVE Man...

So is that Thursday or Friday ?......
Ansar Beit al-Maqdis ? pretty **** name really how's about ABM Tigers or ABuMS something to put the fear of god into us...

Who2 wrote:So is that Thursday or Friday ?......

No idea, but don't expect a direct flight!

Date on the paper the article is from says 17 February 2014 Monday

So that's Friday they have to leave by. It would have been more helpful if these terrorists were more specific..
But then these mad muller's are not exactly MENSA material are they..

If Glyph is right (and she does have the inside track on the Arabic press) and it's only Sinai tourists being told to bugger off....whoopee....could be boom time for Hurghada if Egyptair is quick off the mark with transport planes! Maybe Luxor too?? Plenty of accommodation available there

newcastle wrote:If Glyph is right (and she does have the inside track on the Arabic press) and it's only Sinai tourists being told to bugger off....whoopee....could be boom time for Hurghada if Egyptair is quick off the mark with transport planes! Maybe Luxor too?? Plenty of accommodation available there

Who cares if they only said Sinai, they are terrorists, you can't trust anything they say, I thought originally they said was only targeting the government and army, if that does not work, the next step will be the tourists (like what has happened), they will do anything to bring Egypt to it's knees, for sure they will move on to other places in Egypt (they have already bombed places in Cairo)

Terrorist do operate via threat and fear. I'm not sure they actually want lots of people to die however they DO want lots of attention to their cause and to create deep and lasting fear. Truly sad they're now targeting tourists. Hard to believe that terrorists really would want a country totally brought to its knees with no economic viability meaning no ability to feed its own people. They want to cripple a country's economy just to satisfy whatever their own terrorist agenda is. Sad and hardly understandable these sub-humans carry this type of agenda.

I think I found the Twitter account in question, and if they are precise in timing based on when they tweeted, then the tourists have until very early Thursday morning. Personally, I would err on the side of caution until things become more clear.

That said, I would not get excited about the prospects for Hurghada, especially since it would be at the expense of tourists being killed or hurt in Sinai, which comes across as rather callous. There would be a knock off effect anywhere. You do realize one of Zaazou's key selling points until now has been "tourists have never been targeted since the revolution" and now that is no longer true. One of the pitfalls of using "safety" as part of your PR message.

The native population of Sinai has never been very tightly integrated with Egypt and Egyptians as a whole, by the way.

I read this report yesterday but as I'm not familiar with the source I was waiting to see if it was reported elsewhere. One of the first things I thought was that Ansar Beit-al Maqdis don't have a Twitter account, so if you found it GD could you possibly put up the link.

The BBC report does not mention any deadline

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26236858

Islamist militant group Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis has said it carried out a deadly bomb attack on a tourist bus in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Sunday.

The group warned it was part of its "economic war" against the current Egyptian authorities, which it described as "traitors".

Three South Koreans and an Egyptian were killed in the attack.

The Sinai peninsula has become increasingly lawless since President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in 2011.

Militants further stepped up their attacks after President Mohamed Morsi was ousted by the army last year.

Tourism industry fears
Egypt map
In a statement, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis said one its members carried out the bombing.

"With God's will we will be watching this treacherous gang of infiltrators and we will target their economic interests," it said.

This was the first attack on tourists in nearly a decade, raising fears that the militants have renewed a campaign to wreck the flagging tourism industry.

The bus was reported to be heading into Israel from St Catherine's monastery, a popular tourist destination near Mount Sinai, when it was attacked.

South Korea's foreign ministry said on Monday that the bus was carrying 31 tourists, plus three tour guides - two Korean and one Egyptian.

Those who died were the two South Korean tour guides, a Korean tourist and the Egyptian driver, Yonhap news agency reported, citing the ministry.

Fourteen other South Koreans were taken to hospital.

The passengers were members of a church group on a 12-day tour of religious sites in Turkey, Egypt and Israel, the South Korean news agency said.

The exact cause of the blast is not clear. One report describes a young man throwing a device into the vehicle, another - citing South Korea's ambassador to Egypt - says the man boarded the bus.

Glyphdoctor wrote:I think I found the Twitter account in question, and if they are precise in timing based on when they tweeted, then the tourists have until very early Thursday morning. Personally, I would err on the side of caution until things become more clear.

That said, I would not get excited about the prospects for Hurghada, especially since it would be at the expense of tourists being killed or hurt in Sinai, which comes across as rather callous. There would be a knock off effect anywhere. You do realize one of Zaazou's key selling points until now has been "tourists have never been targeted since the revolution" and now that is no longer true. One of the pitfalls of using "safety" as part of your PR message.

The native population of Sinai has never been very tightly integrated with Egypt and Egyptians as a whole, by the way.

Are you familiar with Poe's Law ?

If there are any more incidents affecting tourists I would expect countries to reimpose travel warnings...and that would be that.

Reading the report posted by Bombay possibly puts another angle on things too (for me anyway).

I noticed in other reports that the driver had a Christian name and I tried to suppress my own initial niggles about that. Now I read that the tour was a Christian tour looking at religious sites and I can't help but wonder if that is also relevant.

I suspect most tour groups visiting Egypt and Israel are on some sort of "Holy Land" tour. Not necessarily church groups all of them but it is probably the most common kind of tour package sold that involves both countries.

There are certainly Holy Land tours which visit Mt Sinai and Israel but not the rest of Egypt.

Glyphdoctor wrote:I suspect most tour groups visiting Egypt and Israel are on some sort of "Holy Land" tour. Not necessarily church groups all of them but it is probably the most common kind of tour package sold that involves both countries.

Yes, but that is the difference in my mind. It was this kind of tour and not, for example, a tour going from Sharm for a trip to Ras Mohammed Park.