CAIRO, April 24: Thirty people were killed and 150 wounded when three explosions rocked a market and a busy restaurant area in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Dahab on Monday.

There was no immediate word on the nationality of the victims. The resort is popular with Western backpackers and budget Israeli tourists as well as Egyptians.

“Around 7pm (1600 GMT), we heard three explosions close to the seafront alongside a supermarket in the centre of Dahab,” French tourist Frederic Mingeon said.

“There was a plume of smoke and people started running and screaming.”

State television said the blasts appeared to have been the result of remote-controlled bombs, and not suicide bombers.

All exits from the town were sealed off by police, he added.

Israel immediately offered to send emergency teams to help with rescue efforts.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz ‘offered to send army rescue teams and doctors’, his ministry said.

Hundreds of Israeli tourists were rushing home after the blasts, Israeli police said.

A state of alert was declared at the main hospital in the Israeli border town of Eilat, both to handle any casualties sent for treatment there and to free up doctors for dispatch to the scene.

The resorts of Egypt’s south Sinai peninsula have been repeatedly hit by militants in recent years.

Bomb attacks in the Red Sea resorts of Sharm el Sheikh in July last year and Taba in Oct 2004 together killed about 100 people, dealing a blow to Egypt’s vital tourism industry.

Four groups claimed the Sharm el Sheikh bombings, including Al Tawhid wal Jihad, an Islamist movement which said the attacks were revenge for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.—AFP