Two German women were killed and four other people wounded in a stabbing attack at the popular Red Sea resort of Hurghada yesterday.
The knifeman, who sought out foreign tourists, was eventually wrestled to the ground and tied up by hotel staff after he swam from one hotel beach to another. Photos shared on social media showed the assailant being restrained on a luggage trolley.
Officials said that the attacker, identified by Egyptian media as a university student, had bought an admission ticket to the beach at the Zahabia hotel. He killed the two women, said to be long-term residents of Hurghada, by stabbing each of them three times in the chest.
At least one Czech citizen was among the wounded. Germany’s foreign ministry said on Saturday they had been left “dismayed and furious” by the stabbings. “According to what we know, the act was a deliberate attack on foreign tourists – a particularly devious and criminal act that leaves us sad, dismayed and furious,” a spokeswoman said.
After injuring two other people by stabbing them in the face, neck and legs, the knifeman escaped by jumping the wall and swimming to the beach of the Sunny Days El Palacio hotel and spa in the resort, about 250 miles south of Cairo. He stabbed two other people there before hotel security staff overpowered him.
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The attacker wore blue jeans and a black T-shirt. When an Egyptian guest tried to intervene he shouted: “Move away from me. I don’t want Egyptians. You are not the people I’m seeking.”
Amr el-Qazaz, a producer at the broadcaster Al Jazeera, tweeted photos showing one tourist smeared in blood on a hotel sofa and others being taken out on stretchers. Other photos showed the knifeman on the floor bleeding with his legs tied with rope.
The interior ministry said that the attacker was under arrest. “We don’t know his motives yet, he could be crazy or disturbed — it’s too early to tell,” a senior official said.
Al-Masry al-Youm, an Egyptian daily, identified the attacker as Sheikh Abdul Rahman, 28, from the Kafr el-Sheikh area of the Nile Delta. He is a business student at al-Azhar University in Cairo, one of the most celebrated Sunni centres of learning.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the second in Hurghada, once considered the safest tourist spot in Egypt, in the past 18 months. Three tourists were injured in an Isis attack in January last year.
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Hurghada has become the preferred holiday destination in Egypt for Britons since the UK imposed a flight ban to Sharm el-Sheikh after Isis claimed responsibility for the deaths of 224 people on board a Russian jet that crashed after it took off from the resort in 2015.