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Militants Hit Karnak Temple, in 2nd Recent Attack on Egyptian Tourist Sites Militants Hit Karnak Temple, in 2nd Recent Attack on Egyptian Tourist Sites
(about 7 hours later)
CAIRO — Militants set off an explosion near the Karnak temple in Luxor on Wednesday, the second assault in about a week targeting antiquities at Egyptian tourist sites, suggesting an ominous turn in a two-year-old campaign of violence against the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. CAIRO — A suicide bomber and two gunmen attacked the Karnak temple in Luxor on Wednesday in the second assault in a week against Egypt’s premier tourist sites, an ominous turn in the violence against the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
Attacks had previously focused mainly on the Egyptian security forces that supported Mr. Sisi in his ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood almost two years ago. But the quick succession of recent attacks on antiquities suggests that militants may also now be targeting the tourism industry — a pillar of the Egyptian economy — in a possible reversion to the tactics of the Islamist insurgency that flared here in the 1990s. Stopped by the police in the parking lot outside the temple, one of the attackers blew himself up with a suicide belt. A second was killed in a gunfight with the police, and the third attacker and at least one officer were wounded. The temple was unharmed.
Security officials said on Wednesday that a suicide bomber in Luxor, about 400 miles south of Cairo, had detonated explosives in a vest and had died. Merely by signaling their intent to attack the tourist industry, however, the militants are threatening to cut off a vital engine of the Egyptian economy, which Mr. Sisi’s government had just begun to announce was sputtering back after four years of turmoil.
Officials said the police had exchanged gunfire with the attackers, killing a second militant and wounding a third. A police officer was also hurt, the officials said, but there was no damage to the temple or other antiquities. Later, Health Ministry officials said another person might have been injured. Luxor, in particular, evokes memories of the government’s long battle to crush an earlier Islamist insurgency that flared up two decades ago, reaching an apex in 1997 when a dozen gunmen massacred 58 tourists and six Egyptians at another ancient temple just across the Nile. But it also recalls the more recent mass shooting in March at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, when three gunmen killed more than 20 people, almost all of them tourists.
The attack came just a week after gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed two tourism police officers near the gate of the complex that contains the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, across the Nile from Cairo. Just a week before the attack in Luxor on Wednesday, gunmen on a motorcycle fatally shot two tourism police officers near the gate to reach the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, across the Nile from Cairo and about 400 miles north of Luxor.
For the first 18 months after the takeover that brought Mr. Sisi to power, militant attacks almost exclusively targeted military and police personnel, leaving hundreds dead. The militant group Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, based in the North Sinai, claimed responsibility for most of the violence and last fall it pledged its loyalty to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. Then, late Tuesday night, militants in the North Sinai fired a series of rockets into an airport used by a group of international observers stationed at a nearby base under a provision of the 1979 peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. No one was harmed, but the attack ended two years of truce in which the militants spared the observer force from attack despite escalating battles with Egyptian government forces in the area around it.
The shootings and small bombs then began to target businesses and critical infrastructure like electrical power stations in Cairo, Alexandria and elsewhere, causing some civilian casualties but mainly seeking to damage the economy. A Twitter account believed to belong to the North Sinai unit of the Islamic State militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. The unit was previously known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or Partisans of Jerusalem, before pledging allegiance to the Islamic State last winter.
Shadowy new groups with names like Revolutionary Punishment and the Popular Resistance Movement began claiming responsibility for many of the attacks, but they tapered off in March after the militants failed to disrupt a high-profile economic development conference in Sharm el Sheikh that Mr. Sisi hosted. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the either the Luxor or Giza attacks. But all three events demonstrate a new willingness by militants to risk alienating the broader civilian population in their drive to undermine Mr. Sisi, the former general who led the military ouster of President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood nearly two years ago.
The most recent attacks raise the possibility that at least some militants may now be turning to attacks on the tourism sector as an alternative strategy to impair any economic recovery and to destabilize the government. “They are really trying to increase the pain and pressure on the Sisi regime,” said William McCants, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who studies Islamist militancy.
Egypt depends on a steady flow of tourists as a major source of hard currency, and the past four years of unrest have taken a heavy toll on the economy, mainly because of their effects on the tourism industry. Just a few successful attacks or bombings can scare tourists away and cripple the industry. “How does Egypt get out of its current hole without tourism?” he added. “A strike at the heart of Egypt’s economy like this is really a strike at the heart of Sisi’s rationale for running as a new strongman, which was his promise of security.”
The Luxor attack on Wednesday was reminiscent of a mass shooting in 1997 at an archaeological site on the other side of the Nile, when attackers from a militant organization, the Islamic Group, shot and killed more than 60 people, most of them tourists. Islamist militants that began attacking Egyptian security forces as soon as Mr. Sisi took power, killing hundreds of soldiers and police officers. But until now, they had largely avoided direct attacks on the tourist industry, presumably mindful of its importance to the livelihoods of many Egyptian civilians.
Historians say that attack backfired badly against the militants, alienated the public and bolstered support for Hosni Mubarak, who was president at that time. But many here have worried quietly that at least a few members of the new generation of militants might be tempted to target the tourism industry as a soft spot in the Egyptian police state. The massacre at Luxor in 1997 is remembered as a turning point in the defeat of that generation’s insurgency because anger at the blood bath and the resulting devastation of the tourist industry helped build support for the crackdown against the militants by the president at the time, Hosni Mubarak.
On Tuesday night, militants in the North Sinai fired rockets toward an air base used by an international peacekeeping force created under a 1979 agreement between Egypt and Israel, Egyptian state news media reported. There were no reports of injuries. “It is awfully bold to go back to the scene of the Luxor attack, considering how many of the people involved in that came to regret it afterward, seeing it as the precursor to such a harsh and largely effective crackdown,” said Brian Fishman, who studies Islamist militancy at the New America Foundation, in Washington.
It was the first time militants targeted the peacekeepers, most of whom come from Western countries. The international observer base in the North Sinai appears to have been spared until now despite the violence around it because it is a major employer of local Bedouin, maintaining close ties to all the big families in the area, so attacking the observers could also alienate the local population, said Zack Gold, a scholar at the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv, who tracks the Sinai militants. Such an attack could also bring down the wrath of the United States and other Western powers because they deploy personnel there.
Some analysts hinted that the militants refrained from striking the peacekeepers because the operation in the North Sinai provides jobs and is thus popular among local residents, suggesting that the rocket attack might also indicate a strategic shift. But analysts watching its position amid the Islamic State’s other attacks “were waiting for the shoe to drop,” Mr. Gold added.
Social media accounts believed to represent the Sinai unit of the Islamic State — the group formerly known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis — said it had claimed responsibility for the rocket attack. If the attacks against tourist sites and Western outposts become a pattern, it could be a new phase in the evolution of the militant backlash against Mr. Sisi’s takeover.
After 18 months of attacks focused almost exclusively on security forces and centered in the North Sinai, shadowy new groups with names like Revolutionary Punishment and the Popular Resistance Movements began emerging last fall with chapters in Cairo and around Egypt. They waged a low-grade campaign of small bombings aimed at commercial interests and electrical infrastructure in attempt to damage the economy and undermine business support for Mr. Sisi, although they killed at least a few civilians in the process.
Those attacks tapered off after March, however, when the militants failed to disrupt a high-profile economic development conference that Mr. Sisi hosted under tight security in Sharm el Sheikh.
Many analysts now wondered whether this new generation of militants might turn again to attacking the tourism sector despite the backlash that earlier insurgents faced. The context may look different to militants emboldened by the feeling that the Islamic State’s messianic “caliphate” is behind them, Mr. Fishman contended. “The question is, are they able to make the same mistakes again?” he asked.
Sites like Karnak, a towering complex millenniums old, can make a tempting target because their visitors are a major source of badly needed hard currency for Egypt, which depends on imports for much of its food and other goods. Just a few successful attacks or bombings can scare tourists away and cripple the industry, just as the unrest of the last four years has already done.
Mina Yahia, operator of a Luxor tourism company, played down Wednesday’s attack, saying the company’s customers were already well inside the massive temple at the time and far from the bomb or gunshots in the parking lot. “We can’t predict the future,” Mr. Yahia said. “We hope it will be O.K.”