Updated at 4.21pm
A SWEDISH TOURIST who was stabbed during an attack on a hotel in Egypt yesterday has recalled what took place.
Police shot dead one of the assailants and badly wounded the other, after they targeted the tourists in beachfront Rea Sea resort hotel Bella Vista yesterday.
Egypt’s tourism minister visited the victims in hospital this morning as police investigated the latest blow to the country’s tourism industry.
Two Austrians and a Swede were wounded in the attack.
The health ministry said they suffered knife wounds and were in stable condition. It was the second attack in as many days against an Egyptian hotel.
Speaking to the media from his hospital bed, 27-year-old Sammie Olovsson described what happened during the attack:
I look at them, there are two guys. Both of them had a knife in their right hand, and something that looks like a pistol, a gun, in the left hand, something black. And I am shocked, I don’t know what to do.
He sliced me… on the neck, and then he shoves his knife (in my shoulder), and I go to the ground, and I bleed a lot from my neck.
I thought I would bleed to death. At that point, I’m saying to father, ‘I think I will bleed to death right now’.
The gun that Olovsson described later turned out to be fake, hotel officials said.
In a post on their Facebook page, the hotel also claimed the two men were “drugged”.
“The three guests are okay now, one had left the hospital yesterday within two hours after the attack and the other two left the hospital this morning,” the post read.
Any other rumors or news more than the above is nonsense and crap. Most probably is to make propaganda that will affect the tourism in Egypt badly, and that was the main aim.
The interior ministry said the assailants entered the hotel from a restaurant on the street front.
A video published by Egyptian news websites appeared to show the wounded assailant receiving emergency medical treatment and being questioned on his identity.
He appears to have been shot in both legs.
Tourism minister Hisham Zazou described the assailants as “amateurish” and said their motive was not yet clear.
“If someone wants to claim that this is part of a terrorist group, it is a bit amateurish for that,” the minister said.
“They used only knives. If someone wants to attempt really to create a terrible incident, he would not be using a knife.”
The incident further threatened efforts to repair the country’s damaged tourism industry, coming a day after a Cairo hotel hosting Israeli tourists came under attack by men who hurled fireworks and fired birdshot.
The Islamic State group claimed credit for that attack, which they said targeted “Jewish” tourists.
Police said they were Arab-Israeli tourists, and the assailants had targeted policemen outside the hotel and not the tourists.
© – AFP 2016, with additional reporting by Nicky Ryan. Originally published 12.13pm
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