RAS SHYTAN, Egypt, Oct. 9 -- Camp David has been abandoned. So have Freedom Beach, Liberty, Bawadi and Red Rock.
The camp-style resorts along the low-budget end of the Red Sea Riviera have been vacated by the young Israelis for whom they were built. No one knows if the Israelis will return. They left, many in near hysteria, following a bombing Thursday night that officials say killed two Israelis and three Egyptians who served them food and drinks.
Egyptians hoping to find survivors continue to sift through the rubble of a hotel on the Red Sea.
(Reuters)
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The exodus culminated Saturday after the Israeli government urged all citizens remaining in the Sinai Peninsula to leave at once, a message the few holdouts received on Israel Radio here and heeded. With their departure came the end to, or at least the suspension of, a rare relationship between Arabs and Israelis in the region. Many said that scores of friendships between young Egyptians and Israelis dissolved in the ash and anguish of the blast that struck the Moon Island Resort soon after dinner on Thursday.
The attacks here and the larger one 30 miles north in Taba brought horror to a place many Israelis had viewed as an inexpensive sanctuary from the bombings at home. In the terrifying moments immediately after the explosions, young Israelis drew on lessons learned from firsthand experience, stepping in for Egyptian rescue crews that survivors described as hopelessly slow to arrive.
"Until now, Sinai has been our local paradise," said Liron Shokty, 24, a graduate student from Beersheba, Israel. One of only four Israelis who remained in the seaside town of Tarabeen, Shokty and the others packed up Saturday and piled into a Peugeot taxi headed for Israel.
"It's safe here now for the simple reason there's no one left to kill -- the beaches are empty," said Shokty, who witnessed a bus bombing in her home town last month. "We usually get smart after something has happened, but they've already achieved their goal. It will be a long time before we come back."
Israeli officials said the death toll at the Taba Hilton had climbed to 32 as Israeli and Egyptian rescue workers continued to remove debris from the collapsed hotel facade. Officials said 25 of the victims had been identified tentatively as 16 Israelis, 6 Egyptians, 2 Italians and 1 Russian. Rescue workers uncovered seven bodies late Friday night and Saturday, according to Zelig Feiner, a spokesman for Zaka, the Israeli rescue and recovery organization. He said rescue workers believed four to eight bodies might remain in the rubble.
Because of the condition of the remains that have been recovered, officials said DNA samples had been taken from 19 bodies in an effort to identify them. DNA samples were also taken from relatives of the missing.
The narrow highway that links the primitive resorts north of Nuweiba, a conservative city of 7,000 people and the provincial capital of southern Sinai, is desolate once the sun sets. The darkness is broken only by lamps along harbor breakwaters or clusters of lights in the distant hotel compounds, unguarded and set well off the two-lane road. Lines of reed shacks, rented for a few dollars a day, run down to the calm sea.
Moon Island Resort sits on a sweep of ochre land, small waves lapping against its shores. The collection of bungalows made of reed and palm fronds is relatively new. But because of its secluded spot between a wind-blown rise and the glass-clear sea, it was already one of the most popular in the area among young Israelis who favored its laid-back atmosphere.
Lior Havilio, 28, an electronics engineer from Jerusalem, spent most of Thursday doing crossword puzzles and relaxing in the large open-air restaurant at the center of the camp. After dinner, he returned to his seaside bungalow, only to be shaken 20 minutes later by a blast.
Havilio said the force was far stronger than that of two bombings he witnessed in Jerusalem. He feared that the camp, filled with roughly 50 Israelis, was being bombed from the air. He drew quickly on grim experience.
Predicting the camp's remote location would delay emergency crews, Havilio put on as many pieces of clothing as he could find scattered around the bungalow. Over the next few hours, he stripped methodically down with each wounded Israeli he encountered, using the clothes as bandages. A vacationing Israeli medic and physician also worked feverishly in the dim light of collapsed huts through hours of grisly improvised care that drew on makeshift stretchers, bandages and first-aid training.
Havilio said the first Egyptian ambulance arrived about 30 minutes after the blast. But he said its crew largely ignored the wounded Israelis and treated Egyptians first, regardless of the severity of their injuries. Some Israelis began to flee, he said, and the dead were left in an uncovered pile.
