SHARM EL-SHEIKH (Egypt), July 26: Egyptian investigators said on Tuesday they had identified a man suspected to be one of the bombers who died in the Sharm el-Sheikh attacks as Cairo denied the involvement of Pakistani nationals. Many aspects of the investigation were shrouded in mystery three days after the blasts, with no clear direction emerging in the probe so far, contradictory information on the casualty toll and three different claims for the attacks.

Security sources said investigators suspect a known Sinai Islamist called Yusef Badran was one of the suicide bombers involved in the triple bomb attacks in the Red Sea resort on Saturday, the deadliest in Egypt. DNA tests were being carried out on his family and compared with the remains of the suspected Ghazala Gardens hotel bomber, the most devastating of the strikes.

Badran had already been suspected of involvement in another wave of attacks that killed at least 34 people in the Sinai resorts of Taba and Nuweiba further north last October. His family in the Sinai town of Al-Arish said he had been missing for months.

“He was arrested after the Taba bombings and later released,” his mother-in-law Mariam al-Sawarta told AFP. “But I know nothing about his situation. He is married and lived in a village called Al-Metni, south of Al-Arish.” Egyptian forces have been combing the Sinai since Saturday’s bombings, arresting around 200 people.

Interior Minister Habib al-Adly said as early as Saturday there could be links between the Sharm el-Sheikh bombings and the anti-Israeli attacks in Taba. Meanwhile officials fiercely denied the involvement of any Pakistani nationals in the triple bombings.

Three days after the bombs ripped through the glitzy beach and dive resort, a question mark also hung over the death toll, with the health and tourism ministries saying 67 people had perished. “The death toll stands at 67, among them 16 foreigners,” tourism ministry spokeswoman Hala al-Khatib told AFP on Tuesday. Hospital officials have previously said that 88 died. Khatib refused to give the breakdown of nationalities but various reports suggested Italians, Turks and Britons are among the foreign dead, whose number is expected to rise further.

A previously unknown movement calling itself the Unity and Jihad Group in Egypt said it perpetrated the attacks “in revenge for our brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan... and in response to the war against terror”. “It was also out of loyalty to the leaders of the Mujahedeen within the Al Qaeda network, Sheikh Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Ayman al-Zawahiri, may God preserve them,” said the statement on the Internet.

The group said it also carried out the October bombings. It named five “martyrs” it said died in the Sharm attacks. The names differed from those given by another group that claimed responsibility for the bombings on Monday, Mujahedeen Egypt.

The first group to claim responsibility for the attacks, the deadliest in Egypt, was a movement calling itself the Al Qaeda Organization in the Levant and Egypt. Sharm el-Sheikh was packed with tourists when the pre-dawn bombs went off and foreign embassy officials were still in the resort on Tuesday.

Police said some 600 kilograms of explosive were used in the attacks which destroyed the Ghazala hotel and struck a car park and a busy market area.

South Sinai Governor Mustafa Afifi said a temporary checkpoint set up near the Souq before the attacks had prevented one of the suicide bombers from reaching a nearby hotel.

Security was very tight in the area on Thursday, with sniffer dogs inspecting cars at checkpoint along the coast road and security services setting up “flying” roadblocks.—AFP