EL-ARISH, Egypt - Security forces Monday fatally shot three men wanted in terrorist bombings that killed at least 18 people in a coastal Sinai Peninsula resort last week, officials said. | So this is a different "encounter" than Sundays 'incident' |
A policeman also died in the gunfight near Risan, about 25 miles south of el-Arish, a Mediterranean coastal city near the Egyptian border with Gaza, security and police officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters. The three men fatally shot Monday brought to six the number of wanted men killed in the past three days as Egyptian authorities swept the barren, mountainous and forbidding Sinai interior. | "Round up the usual suspects, and shoot them" |
Authorities found the remains of 21 people after the April 24 triple bombing in Dahab, a popular coastal resort, and were awaiting DNA test results to see if three of the dead were suicide bombers.
On Wednesday, two suicide bombers targeted vehicles carrying international peacekeepers and police not far from el-Arish. Only the attackers died.
Egyptian authorities have blamed the attacks on local terrorists, pointing the finger at disaffected Bedouin tribesmen who inhabit the peninsula. Terrorism experts, however, have said the attackers more likely were from al-Qaida-linked terrorist cells given shelter by the semi-nomadic Bedouins. |