3 Tourists Stabbed in Egypt Attack

Red Sea resort attack was 2nd incident in 2 days
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Jan 9, 2016 5:37 AM CST
3 Tourists Stabbed in Egypt Attack
This video image shows Ahmed Abdullah, Governor of Egypt's Red Sea Governorate visiting Sammie Olovsson, a tourist wounded in a knife attack on Friday at an Egyptian Red Sea resort.   (AP Photos/APTN)

Two suspected militants stabbed and wounded three foreign tourists—two Austrians and a Swede—at a hotel in Egypt's Red Sea resort city of Hurghada on Friday, the Interior Ministry said. Security forces opened fire at the two assailants, killing one and seriously wounding the other, according to a ministry statement. The wounded attacker was arrested, according to security officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media. Officials tell the BBC that the attackers, who raised the ISIS flag, were trying to kidnap tourists.

Hospital officials say the victims—Renata and Wilhelm Weisslein, both 72, and Sammie Olovsson, 27—are in stable condition and only suffered shallow wounds. The Hurghada attack was the second attack on a hotel frequented by foreign tourists in Egypt in as many days, an ominous development for the country's already battered tourism industry. The attack came just hours after the local affiliate of ISIS claimed responsibility for an attack a day earlier on a hotel in Cairo near the Giza Pyramids. No one was hurt in the Thursday attack, in which a group of over a dozen men fired flares and birdshot at a security post outside the hotel where Arab Israeli tourists were staying. (More ISIS stories.)

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