CAIRO: Two Ukrainian women were killed on Friday at an Egyptian beach resort when an assailant swam ashore and stabbed them and also wounded four others, state media said.
The governor of Red Sea province, where the resort of Hurghada is located, said two “foreign residents” of the city were killed in the attack, a cabinet statement said.
Egypt’s official Al Ahram newspaper reported on its website that two Ukrainian female tourists died in the stabbing and four others were injured.
The interior ministry said the attacker, who had swum ashore, has been arrested and was being questioned about his motives.
In January 2016, three tourists in Hurghada were wounded in a stabbing assault by two assailants with apparent IS sympathies.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack.
Hurghada is one of Egypt’s most popular beach resorts, especially with Ukrainians and European tourists.
Security has been boosted in tourist resorts around the country, as the industry provides Egypt with much needed revenues.
An IS bombing of a Russian airliner carrying holidaymakers from a south Sinai resort in 2015 killed all 224 people on board and decimated the country’s tourism sector.
Russia suspended all flights to Egypt in response and has yet to resume them.
IS has been waging a deadly insurgency based in the north of the Sinai Peninsula that has killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers.
On Friday, unknown assailants shot dead five policemen south of Cairo, in the latest of a series of attacks targeting the country’s security forces.
The ministry said three gunmen opened fire on a police car and then fled, killing a non-commissioned officer, three conscripts and a police employee.
The attack took place near Badrasheen, a town some 20 kilometres from Cairo, where militants have also targeted police in the past.
As with the beach stabbing, there has not yet been any claim of responsibility for the attack.
The killings came as police and the army said they were closing in on militants following a spate of deadly attacks in the Nile Valley and the Sinai Peninsula.
Egypt has struggled to quell IS militants based in the Sinai and smaller militant groups in the mainland since the military overthrew president Mohamed Mursi in 2013 and cracked down on his supporters. — AFP
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