Tourists throng Egypt pyramids after bombing, but future clouded
The attack comes as Egypt’s vital tourism sector has begun to recover after years of instability
A bombing hit a tourist bus killing four people on Friday
Updated 30 December 2018
AFP
GIZA: Crowds of tourists stared in awe at the towering pyramids of Giza near Cairo on Saturday undaunted by a nearby bomb attack a day earlier that killed holidaymakers from Vietnam.
A roadside bombing ripped through a tourist bus killing three tourists and an Egyptian guide on Friday, as it traveled near the world-famous attraction.
The attack comes as Egypt’s vital tourism sector has begun to recover after years of instability and militant violence that scared visitors away.
“I think terrorism can strike anywhere in the world,” Somand Yang from South Korea told AFP.
“You have to be careful but it is also like luck.” Security forces guarded the entrance to the sprawling site and Yang, 32, said she had no qualms about visiting.
“Lightning never strikes twice in the same place. So I figured it will be even safer today,” she said.
Excited holidaymakers rode camels and queued to enter a tomb as they snapped pictures of the Great Pyramid, the only surviving structure of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
Hawkers followed the tourists, doggedly trying to sell trinkets and souvenirs. Despite the steady flow of visitors, Egyptians working at the site said they were shaken by the attack — and concerned that it could hit their livelihoods.
“I knew the guide who died yesterday,” said Dalia Sadaka, as she accompanied a group of sightseers.
“I completely broke down yesterday, but I had to get to work in the morning,” she said, pointing to her visibly swollen eyes.
Earlier hit hard by a string of bloody attacks and unrest, visitor numbers to Egypt have more recently staged a partial recovery.
In October 2015, a bomb claimed by a local affiliate of Daesh killed all 224 people on board a passenger jet carrying Russian tourists over the Sinai peninsula.
That incident dealt a severe blow to Egypt’s tourism industry, which was still reeling from the turmoil set off by the 2011 uprising that forced veteran leader Hosni Mubarak from power.
The official statistics agency says arrivals reached 8.2 million in 2017, up from 5.3 million the year before.
But that figure was still far short of the record influx in 2010 when over 14 million came.
“I fear yesterday’s incident may have an impact on our source of income,” said an elderly man who offers camel rides, declining to give his name.
“It is very regretable,” he said. “We were finally happy that tourism started picking up a bit.”
LONDON: Israeli soldiers fired more than 900 bullets during a massacre of Palestinian aid workers that included “execution-style” killings, a detailed reconstruction of one of the worst atrocities of the Gaza war has found.
The investigation recreated a 3D digital version of the scene of the killings and used audio analysis of recordings to pinpoint how the attack unfolded in March last year.
Fifteen Palestinian aid workers were killed when Israel troops ambushed their vehicles in Tel Al-Sultan, near Rafah, southern Gaza. The victims included ambulance crews from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, rescue teams from the Palestinian Civil Defense sent to help, and a member of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA.
Israel tried to hide evidence of the killings by crushing the vehicles left at the scene and burying them in the sand, along with the victims’ bodies.
The joint investigation published on Monday was carried out by London-based researchers Forensic Architecture and Earshot, an audio analysis agency.
Israeli soldiers “subjected Palestinian aid workers to continuous assault by gunfire for over two hours” in an attack that started shortly after 5 a.m. on March 23, the study found.
The position of each vehicle in the convoy as the shooting began. (Forensic Architecture)
Contrary to Israel’s initial claims that events unfolded in a combat zone, “there was no exchange of fire in the area, and no tangible threat to the safety of those soldiers,” the report said.
The researchers documented at least 910 gunshots from three recordings from the scene. At least 844 shots were recorded within a five-and-a-half-minute period in video taken by paramedic Refaat Radwan, one of the victims.
More than 90 percent of the bullets were fired directly toward the emergency vehicles and aid workers during the initial period of the attack, with at least five soldiers firing simultaneously.
The investigation concluded that the emergency lights and markings of the vehicles ambushed would have been clearly visible to the soldiers.
Israeli troops continued shooting as they advanced on the vehicles before carrying out perhaps the most disturbing act of the attack.
“Upon reaching them, they moved through the vehicles and shot several of the aid workers at close range,” the report said.
One of the shots was fired between one and four meters away from paramedic Ashraf Abu Libda and coincided with the last time his voice was heard on recordings, “suggesting that these were the shots that killed him.”
A 3D reconstruction of Asaad Al-Nasasra and Muhammad al-Hila embracing while under Israeli fire. Muhammad was shot and killed while in this position while Asaad survived, researchers found. (Forensic Architecture)
The initial attack started at about 4 a.m. when Israeli forces opened fire on an ambulance sent to the scene of an Israeli airstrike, killing the two crew members inside.
Three more ambulances were sent to search for the missing crew. Once they found the vehicle, they were joined by a Palestinian Civil Defense ambulance and a fire truck.
“All vehicles were clearly marked and had their emergency lights on,” the report said.
Within minutes of the five vehicles arriving at the scene, and as the aid workers approached their fallen colleagues, the Israeli soldiers opened fire.
The driver of a UN Toyota truck that passed the site about an hour later was also killed.
Researchers were able to map the positions and movements of the Israeli troops throughout the attack with the help of echolocation and audio-ballistic analysis.
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This enabled them to work out the distance and the direction of the source of the gunshots from the devices making the recordings.
Researchers also detailed the extent of the Israeli military’s efforts to “conceal and disrupt evidence of the attack.”
This included burying the victims’ bodies, burying mobile phones, and crushing and partially burying the victims’ vehicles.
Analysis of satellite images revealed how Israel transformed the site with earth-moving machinery in the hours following the attack.
One of the two survivors of the ambush was detained for more than a month, tortured, and interrogated.
The bodies of 14 of the victims were found in a mass grave near the site on March 30, while the remains of another victim were found a few days earlier nearby.
A forensic doctor who examined some of the bodies told The Guardian newspaper that there was evidence of execution-style killing given the location of the wounds.
Coming during the height of Israel’s two-year war on Gaza that has killed more than 72,000 Palestinians, the massacre of aid workers sparked international outcry.
In the aftermath, Israel gave varying accounts of what happened, initially claiming that its troops thought they were facing an attack.
On April 20, the Israeli military said an inquiry into the attack had identified “several professional failures, breaches of orders, and a failure to fully report the incident.”
A duty commander was dismissed for “providing an incomplete and inaccurate report during the debrief,” but there have been no further measures against those who carried out the attack.
