CAIRO, Egypt - A series of explosions, including four car bombs, struck luxury hotels in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik early Saturday, killing at least 45 people, witnesses and police said.
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Saturday's explosions â?? the deadliest attack in Egypt in nearly a decade â?? shook windows more than five miles away. Smoke and fire rose from Naama Bay, a main strip of beach hotels in the desert city at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which is also popular with European and Israeli tourists, witnesses said.
Dazed tourists milled about the darkened streets as Egyptian rescuers searched for dead and injured and ambulances sped away with victims.
"There seemed to be a lot of bodies strewn across the road" near one cafe, British policeman Chris Reynolds, visiting from Birmingham, England, told the BBC by telephone. "It was horrendous."
At least four car bombs were used in the 1:15 a.m. attack, said a security official in the operations control room in Cairo monitoring the crisis. One went off in the driveway of the Ghazala Garden hotel, a 176-room four-star resort on the main strip of hotels in Naama Bay, the governor of South Sinai province, Mustafa Afifi, said.
Another exploded in the Old Market, an area a few miles away, killing 17 people â?? believed to be Egyptians â?? sitting at a nearby outdoor coffee shop, the control room official said. Three minibuses were set ablaze, though it was not clear if they were carrying passengers, the official said.
Another blast went off near the Meridian Hotel, said a receptionist there who declined to identify himself.
Although many tourists could have been asleep when the explosions struck, the resort's sidewalk cafes, seafront restaurants and bazaars are usually packed with locals and tourists well into the late summer nights.
Security officials put the toll at 45 killed and around 200 wounded. The Interior Ministry put out a statement putting the toll at 31 people and 107 wounded.
The dead in the Sharm blasts included British, Russian, Dutch, Kuwaitis, Saudis, Qataris and Egyptians, a security official said. The officials, including the one in the control crisis, were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were giving information not yet included the official statement.
Amal Mustafa, 28, an Egyptian who was visiting Sharm with her family, told The Associated Press that she drove by the Ghazala Garden and it was "completely burned down, destroyed."
A London police officer, Charlie Ives, who was on vacation, told BBC Television that he was in a street cafe about 50 yards from where two explosions went off.
"It was mass hysteria really. We tried to calm people down," he said. He said the blast was so strong, "we were virtually thrown from the cafe."
Another British tourist, Fabio Basone, was in Naama Bay's Hard Rock Cafe when he heard a small explosion, then a larger one that sparked "mass panic with people running and screaming in all directions."
"We went outside on to the street where we were met with hundreds of people running and screaming in all directions," he told BBC. "I saw the front of a hotel had been blown away ... There were two bodies on the floor but I don't know if they were dead."
Scores of ambulances from cities in the northern Sinai and the Suez Canal cities of Suez and Ismailiya were headed to Sharm to help with casualties.
Khaled Sakran, a resident, said he saw one explosion from the Old Market. "I saw the saw the fire in the sky," he told The Associated Press. "Right after, I saw a light in the sky and heard another explosion, coming from Naama Bay."
"The blast shook my house, I can see the fire and lots of smoke," Akram al-Sherif, a Jordanian who was staying at a summer house less than a mile away, said.
In October 2004, a series of explosions hit several hotels in the Sinai resorts of Taba and Ras Shitan, about 100 miles northwest along the Gulf of Aqaba coast, killing 34 people. Egyptian authorities said that attack was linked to Israeli-Palestinian violence and launched a large wave of arrests in Sinai.
Thousands of tourists are drawn to Sharm for its sun and clear blue water. The area's coral reefs are famous among divers and snorkelers.
It also has been a meeting place where world leaders have tried to hammer out a Mideast peace agreement. Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas met there in February and agreed to a cease-fire.
President
Hosni Mubarak has a residence at a resort several miles outside Naama Bay and often spends weeks at a time there in the winter. But during the summer, he stays at a residence in the northern city of Alexandria.
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AP correspondents Sarah El Deeb, Paul Garwood Nadia Abou El-Magd and Salah Nasrawi in Cairo contributed to this report.
