Sep. 10, 2004

IDF concludes Sinai rescue operation — 13 Israelis among 32 bombing victims

By Matthew Gutman

Taba — Israel may have wrapped up its first military deployment in Egypt in 15 years, calling an end to the rescue mission at Taba Hilton hotel, but uncertainty over the final death toll — which fluctuated between 32 and 35 - continued to shroud the operation.

Hope of finding any additional bodies in the flattened southern end of the hotel had dimmed by early morning Sunday, but OC Home Front Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh officially declared an end to search efforts at a prearranged press conference at dusk.

In all, 32 people, including 13 Israelis, died in twin terror attacks in Taba and the resort area of Ras a-Satan, some 50 km. to the south, Naveh said.

The destruction at the Hilton was carried out by a suicide bomber who detonated a single car bomb, Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon told the cabinet Sunday, refuting reports there was a second female suicide bomber who detonated a charge at the swimming pool.

He said there was another suicide bomber in a car bomb at Ras a-Sultan, and a third in another car bomb that went off prematurely nearby, before reaching its target.

Ya'alon said that 33 bodies were found, including 13 Israelis, six Egyptians, and 14 tourists.

Naveh said there were "14 body parts" unaccounted for, and intimated that some could belong to the bombers. He said the number of dead might actually be 35. Estimates of deaths has for days oscillated between 31 and 35 in a testimony to the destructive power of the bomb which so shredded its victims that only DNA tests could identify them.

While Israel seemed to adopt this particular terror attack — a Hebrew Web site headline read "19 foreigners [including Egyptians] died in attacks" - less than half the fatalities were Israeli. Egypt had six victims, Russia and the former Soviet states 14, and Italy two, according to Home Front Command.

"If you counted the numbers I just gave you,‘ Naveh said at the press conference at the Taba crossing, ’you'll get 35. We are working on closing the gaps between the whole bodies we found [32] and that number." Seven of the 13 Israelis are already awaiting burial in Israel, while six are on their way from the morgue in Nuweiba. Egypt has refused to release any bodies before DNA testing proved their nationality.

Naveh's press conference painted a picture far less cataclysmic than initially reported — pundits dubbed it the deadliest attack on Israelis in the country's history. While the Egyptians had tight-fistedly doled out information about fatalities — after its estimates in the hours after the bombings proved uncannily accurate — initial investigations reveal that the Egyptian and Russian Hilton employees residing on the first floor just above where the car bomb exploded represented the brunt of the deaths.

With the search and rescue over, the IDF handed jurisdiction over the case to the Israel Police. Meanwhile, Israeli and Egyptian investigators are working on cracking a lead in the bombings, said to be masterminded by al-Qaida. Israeli officials are already working in Ras a-Satan, said a security source.

Egyptian authorities have detained 150 suspects, mostly Beduin. The detainees are suspected of having supplied the terrorists with explosives. Three relatively obscure groups have claimed responsibility, but media reports indicate that Egypt and Israel have few concrete leads. The Taba Hilton was at 95 percent capacity on Thursday, with up to 900 guests and 500 employees inside when the car crashed into the lobby. Many Israelis vacationed in Taba during Succot.

Naveh said the collapse of 20 rooms on the southern side of the hotel created a "huge professional problem" for the rescuers, who had to burrow through the equivalent of 13 stories of concrete condensed into several compact meters of debris in the building's basement.

"Had the bomber detonated the bomb near the foundations of the hotel rather than in the middle of the lobby, it would have been far, far worse," Naveh said.

As thunderously as the search-and-rescue operation began Thursday night, it ended noiselessly Sunday. The backhoes, bulldozers, and cranes that were unable to pass into Egypt in the pre-dawn hours on Friday and almost sparked an international imbroglio, quietly rolled across the border to Israel Sunday afternoon.

Hours earlier, spotlights that had lit up the disaster zone passed back into Israel, in a clear sign to observers that rescue efforts would end by nightfall.

Israeli and Egyptian officers — at first skittish about the sight of Israeli soldiers on their side of the border — commended the cooperation on both sides. A brigadier-general with Egypt's Fire and Rescue Unit said Israel and Egypt were "working well, hand-in-hand," at the bomb site.

Col. Gideon Baron, commander of Israel's National Search and Rescue Unit, said, "This was a tragic event, but the one ray of light in this whole thing was the way our relationship with the Egyptians improved. The situation of life and death did its job, and the cooperation improved."

Grimy troops of the Home Front Command's Search and Rescue Unit worked cheek to jowl with their silver-helmeted counterparts, scooping out piles of debris at the bottom of a crater under which workers believed there might be entombed victims.

It was the first ever military cooperation between the two countries, and Israeli officials hinted that the two states would continue cooperation in the realm of search-and-rescue operations. However, in an early sign of a withdrawal to the cold peace before the bombing, both the Egyptian military liaison with Israel and the Egyptian vice-consul in Israel were refused permission to attend a memorial service for the victims at the Israeli side of the Taba crossing.

Herb Keinon contributed to this report.

In Memoriam

• Michal Alexander, 27
• Roi Avisaf, 28
• Assaf Greenwald, 27
• Hafez Hafi, 39
• Rotem Moriah, 27
• Einat Naor, 28
• Tzila Niv, 43
• Gilad Niv, 11
• Lior Niv, 3
• Pazakov Ludmila, 30
• Pazakov Oleg, 33
• Khalil Zeitounya, 10

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