Bedouins held after Egypt bomb attacks

Egyptian security arrested dozens of Bedouin tribesmen yesterday amid continuing doubts over who was behind the devastating attacks on Israeli tourists which killed at least 34 people in Sinai.

Egyptian security arrested dozens of Bedouin tribesmen yesterday amid continuing doubts over who was behind the devastating attacks on Israeli tourists which killed at least 34 people in Sinai.

Inspectors examining the wreckage of one of what may have been two cars used in the bomb, which sheared off one side of the Hilton hotel here, remained highly reticent about the exact methods they believe the bombers used.

Amid uncertainty about the motive and perpetrators of the attack, Egyptian officials and one Israeli security source warned that they could not yet be certain that the widespread assumption that the bombing was the work of an al-Qa'ida-linked group was correct.

Avi Dichter, the head of Israel's domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, yesterday visited the Taba Hilton, where the most lethal of the three attacks took place on Thursday night, and where inspectors were last night taking DNA samples from bodies being pulled from the rubble to to try and establish whether a suicide attack was involved. He declined to comment to reporters. Colonel Gideon Bar-On, of the Israeli army rescue unit, told Israeli Radio that 13 more bodies were still believed to be under the rubble.

Egyptian officials said that the Bedouin tribesmen detained were mainly quarry workers, some of whom had access to explosives, but they gave no hint of any evidence to link them with the attacks, two of which took place in the camping area of Ras Sitan, 30 miles south of Taba.

Egyptian inspectors were examining parts, including the engine block, of one charred and fractured vehicle laid out on the forecourt of the Taba Hilton as Israeli experts stood by. A senior Israeli rescue worker said he believed two cars had been used in the Hilton bombing.

No Palestinian group has claimed responsibility for the attack and Israeli officials on Friday appeared unanimous in suggesting that they suspected an al-Qa'ida affiliate of having perpetrated it. Dan Arditi, head of Israel's counter-terrorism agency, urged Israelis still in Sinai to return "as soon as possible" and said he had not yet ruled out the possible participation of Palestinian militants.

The agency issued an explicit warning on the dangers of Israelis travelling to the Sinai, which officials have since said referred to the possibility that Palestinian militants might try to cross the border into Egypt through Rafah in Gaza, where tunnels have been used for smuggling weapons and contraband goods. But Mr Arditi also said that the attackers his agency had warned about a month ago could have been different from those who carried out Thursday's bombings.

One theory was that the perpetrators of the attack could have arrived at Taba by speedboat. At least two witnesses said they heard two explosions, though one senior diplomat in touch with security officials said yesterday this could have been from a single bomb and then the collapse of part of the building.

Most of the dead were Israelis, but an elderly Russian woman was killed as well as five or six Egyptian workers at the Taba Hilton.