http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/04/26/1145861423794.html?from=rss

More blasts rock Sinai as injured count blessings

Dahab, Egypt
April 27, 2006

An official checks the Dahab site.
Photo: AP

Two men blew themselves up in bombings in Egypt’s north Sinai yesterday, two days after a triple bombing at a Red Sea resort that killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 80, including three Australians.

A spokesman for the Multinational Force and Observers group, which supervises the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty on the Sinai Peninsula, said the first bomber appeared to target its vehicles but none of its members were injured.

The second man blew himself up next to an empty police car and there were no other casualties, security sources said.

In a third incident in the east of the Nile Delta yesterday, gunmen ambushed police, leading to an exchange of fire. Police had no immediate information on the outcome of the skirmish and it was not clear if the incidents were related.

Two of the 10 people detained in connection with Monday’s triple bombing were computer engineers, who arrived in the Red Sea resort of Dahab from Cairo the day before the blasts.

Egypt’s Interior Ministry confirmed 18 deaths, among them four foreigners: a Russian, a Swiss, a German child and a Lebanese. Earlier, the ministry had put the death toll at 23.

The bombings threaten to dent Egypt’s vital tourist industry, which employs about 10 per cent of the country’s workforce and brings in more than $US7 billion ($A9.4 billion) a year.

Police said that as well as those formally detained, about 70 local Bedouin had been questioned.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

The family of a 27-year-old Australian woman injured in Monday’s blasts are counting their blessings that she survived. Georgina Blake, 27, of Harefield near Wagga Wagga, and a 27-year-old Queensland woman whose name has not been released, were in a stable condition in a Cairo hospital last night.

Ms Blake’s father, Peter Blake, said that Georgina was nearing the end of a year-long “trip of a lifetime”.

“Georgie rang me at 10am on the phone of the tour guide . . . she wasn’t in Dahab, but she wasn’t far away,” Mr Blake said.

“She was walking over a bridge to buy some cheap wine. A bomb went off and they ran back and another went off on the other side. She didn’t break the wine, she said, so she’s still got some sense of humour.”

Ms Blake emerged yesterday morning from surgery for multiple breaks in her shoulder and arm, and a wounded leg.

A third Australian, 22-year-old Cassandra Jackson of Lockwood, near Bendigo, witnessed the blasts and is suffering severe shock. Her father, Peter Jackson, said Cassandra was just four weeks into a year-long world trip.

“We’ve told her not to give up (and to continue the trip),” Mr Jackson said.

AGENCIES with KATE HAGAN

http://www.bgonews.com/news_local/apr06/index.shtml

Egyptian Bombing
Wedensday, April 26, 2006
Fears for the safety of a regional Victorian woman caught in the Egyptian bombing.

The parents of a regional Victorian woman caught up in an overnight bomb blast in Egypt, have spoken about their fears for their daughter’s safety. Twenty-two year old Cassandra Jackson cut short a brief call to her parents from the scene of the blast, and they haven’t been able to contact her since.

Wow. It’s amazing that overnight, you can find out a big dark family secret, that your cousin maybe going insane, that your sister-friend was hospitalised for shock after witnessing a bomb blast in Egypt… this is the kind of sudden turn of many events that I used to use as an example in psychology discussions of why suicide is a bad idea – ‘you never know what’s going to happen next’. All of a sudden it looks like a pretty crap and disempowering excuse.