EGYPT: Egyptian police shot dead one of the prime suspects in the bombings that killed at least 64 people in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on July 23rd, the interior ministry said yesterday.
His wife was also killed and their four-year-old daughter was injured in an exchange of fire with police, a security source added.
Mohamed Fulayfel was killed in the exchange near Gebel Ataqa, a hill 18km (11 miles) west of the town of Suez, it said in a statement.
Police investigating the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings were looking for Fulayfel, who is also on trial in absentia for bombings at three Red Sea resorts in October last year. One bomb, at the Hilton hotel in the town of Taba, killed 34 people.
His brother, Suleiman, was killed in the Hilton hotel blast, with a Palestinian that police said was the operation's mastermind. Police said they died because the timing device did not work properly.
The interior ministry statement said security forces, acting on a tip, were approaching a group hiding in quarries in the Gebel Ataqa area when gunmen opened fire at them.
"The police forces immediately dealt with the source of fire and it became clear that Mohamed Ahmed Saleh Fulayfel had been killed. He was in the company of his wife, who was wounded and taken to hospital for treatment," it added. His wife died on the way to hospital, the security sources said later.
Authorities suspect the Taba and Sharm el-Sheikh bombings - the worst attacks in Egypt since 1981 - were the work of a group of Bedouin based in northern Sinai.
Police had been searching the mountains of southern Sinai for people who might have information on the attacks. But Gebel Ataqa is about 320km (200 miles) away to the northwest, on the African side of the Suez Canal.
The authorities have taken DNA samples from the families of four other north Sinai men they suspect of belonging to the group, to see if it matches that of any of the bodies found at the scene of the three Sharm el-Sheikh bombs.
Documents released as part of the trial of Fulayfel in the Suez Canal town of Ismailia say he carried out the bombing at one of the two beach camps attacked in October.
A security source said Fulayfel and his group had acquired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns which they had hidden in desert parts of the Sinai peninsula.
In some cases, they had taken refuge close to the Israeli border, where the Egyptian government cannot deploy heavy weapons under its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, he said. - (Reuters)