Dozens missing after blasts in Egypt

EILAT, Israel -- Rescue workers yesterday searched the wreckage of an Egyptian hotel for more than three dozen people still missing after three coordinated bomb attacks that killed about 30 Israeli tourists and Egyptians at two vacation resorts on the Red Sea.

Israeli officials and security analysts said the series of bombings, the deadliest single terror attack ever against Israelis, bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda because of the multiple, near-simultaneous explosions, and did not appear to be the work of Palestinian extremist groups that have attacked Israelis within Israel. The deadly attacks expanded the terror threat for Israelis, for whom the Egyptian resorts in the Sinai had been relatively safe, and raised the specter of renewed terrorism in Egypt after years without incident.

An Israeli rescue official said at least 38 people remained missing last night after a full day of rescue work at the Hilton in the border town of Taba, one of two Egyptian vacation towns in the Sinai Peninsula targeted Thursday. Bureaucratic delays at the crossing and wrangling between Israelis and Egyptians held up rescue efforts for hours, but later in the day the two countries worked effectively together on the rescue operation.

All night and throughout the day, thousands of Israelis made for the border in a huge exodus from the Egyptian vacation area, where the economy is heavily dependent on Israeli tourism. On the Israeli side, long lines of frightened young vacationers, many lugging backpacks and sleeping bags, streamed from Taba into the city of Eilat.

The death count fluctuated during the day, and by evening stood at 30.

''Until we reach the floor of the hotel, there's still a chance to find survivors," Major-General Yair Naveh, who leads the Israeli Army's home-front command, told reporters near the hotel. He said it was not clear how many of the 38 missing Israelis had been in the 400-room hotel at the time and might be buried under the collapsed west wing, noting that some might be unaccounted for in the chaos at the border.

There was little information about the number of Egyptian victims.

Nearly all the deaths occurred in the Hilton blast, which was apparently caused by a truck bomb. Israeli officials said two Israelis were killed in the other two explosions, believed to have been caused by suicide bombers wearing packs, later Wednesday night in the camping resort town of Ras al Shitan. Initial reports apparently stated incorrectly that one of the bombings was in Nuweiba, a diving resort near Ras al Shitan.

Shimon Romach, a fire and rescue department official who spent much of yesterday searching for survivors, said he helped dig out a 30-year-old woman who was in the bathroom of her seventh-floor room when the bomb went off.

''The seventh floor collapsed onto the stories underneath and this woman remained trapped in the rubble of her bathroom," Romach told reporters. He said while rescue workers saved her life, they failed to save her grandmother, who died in the wreckage.

Another survivor, 17-year-old Alina Solveyova, said she briefly became separated from her mother after the blast and feared she'd been killed.

''Suddenly I heard a loud noise and luckily, my back was to the glass and my face wasn't hurt, just my back, my head and hand, from glass. I saw a fire and we ran to the beach," she said at Eilat's Joseftal hospital. Her mother turned up a while later.

The Israeli cabinet met in emergency session in Ariel Sharon's Tel Aviv office after the Israeli leader discussed the situation with top security officials in Jerusalem in the morning and by telephone with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt.

Sharon's office said the two leaders agreed on continued cooperation to evacuate the dead and wounded, including admission of more Israeli heavy equipment to Sinai for use in excavation efforts. They also agreed ''that terrorism is the main danger to the free world, and it must be fought together wherever it may be," according to Sharon's office.

''Terrorism doesn't distinguish between countries or peoples," Sharon said in a statement following the cabinet meeting. ''Therefore, there can be no compromise with terrorism. It must be fought relentlessly, in every way possible."

While Sharon commended Egyptians at all levels for cooperating in the war on terror and in the rescue effort, other Israeli officials were more critical of their neighbor for what they called an initial lack of cooperation in the emergency following the blasts and, more broadly, for failing to obstruct arms-smuggling activities in Sinai.

Yuval Steinitz, chairman of the foreign affairs and defense committee of the Israeli parliament, said Egypt bears some responsibility for the blasts. ''Sinai has been a heaven for arms smugglers over the last four years," with thousands of weapons moving across the territory and into Gaza for use by Palestinian militias, he said.

''It would be easy to stop," Steinitz said, noting that the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, estimated more than 6,000 automatic rifles and antitank missiles had been smuggled into Gaza from Egypt in the four-year period of the Palestinian uprising against Israel -- ''very significant numbers that required many trucks to transport."

Israeli officials and analysts generally accepted the assertions of Palestinian groups that they had no hand in the bombings. A little-known international Islamist group claimed responsibility, but such claims have often proved false in the past.

Steinitz said the attack looked like the work of Al Qaeda: ''the mode of operation -- multiple simultaneous attacks -- is the mode of Al Qaeda and its subsidiaries."

Beyond those similarities, there was no specific evidence of al Qaeda involvement.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abdul Gheit of Egypt told reporters in Cairo: ''This is a terrorist attack, but who did it? We can't tell, as the investigation has just begun."

President Bush declared that ''by targeting Muslims and Jews, Egyptians and Israelis, and women and children, the terrorists have shown their total contempt for all human life and for all human values."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell called Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom of Israel yesterday morning to express his sympathy, but the State Department said yesterday it had no information about who carried out the attacks.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said the US government has offered assistance to both the Israeli and Egyptian governments, but neither country has accepted the offer. He said two Americans employed at the US embassy in Tel Aviv and were staying at the Hilton were slightly wounded in the blasts.