Two female German tourists were killed and four other female tourists were wounded on Friday [local time] when a 29-year-old man launched deliberate knife attacks on the foreigners at two neighbouring hotels in the popular Egyptian Red Sea resort of Hurghada.
Armed with a ‘big knife’, Abdel-Rahman Shaaban is alleged to have gained access into the Zahabia Hotel in Hurghada by swimming from a nearby beach. He is said to have conversed in German with the female tourists before stabbing them multiple times and fleeing over a wall dividing the Zahabia Hotel from the Sunny Days El Palacio resort, where he stabbed another four female tourists.
Shaaban is reported to have shouted “Stay back — I am not after Egyptians!”, in Arabic, before he was caught and arrested.
The wounded tourists are believed to be two Czechs and two Armenians.
The attack in Hurghada came just hours after five policemen were shot dead in the al-Badrasheen area of Giza province, 30km south of Cairo, when three men on a motorbike, reportedly carrying automatic rifles, opened fire on a car carrying the five men before lobbing petrol bombs into the vehicle.
IMAGE: a section of Hurghada Beach/Egyptian Tourism Authority