Egyptian Police Kill Suspect in Red Sea Attacks

ROME, May 9 -- One day after police killed a man described as the engineer of an attack last month at the Egyptian seaside town of Dahab, authorities claimed to have all but broken up a group that bombed several Red Sea resorts.

Police and the suspect, Nasser Khamis el-Mallahi, fought a half-hour gun battle in an olive grove south of the Mediterranean coastal city of Arish on the Sinai Peninsula. Mallahi was the seventh person killed since police and soldiers fanned across the Sinai to hunt down suspects in the April 24 Dahab bombings. Mallahi was also involved in the effort to blow up international peacekeepers and Egyptian police at Gorah in the Sinai shortly after the Dahab blasts, Egyptian officials said.

"This is a major blow to the terrorist group," Essam el-Sheik, a police commander in the Sinai, told reporters. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that "the mastermind and leader of the group that carried out the Dahab and Gorah explosions" was dead.

Arish was the home of suspects in two previous bombings: an October 2004 attack in Taba and one last July in Sharm el-Sheikh. After those incidents, the government carried out raids in mountainous regions of the Sinai, killed about a dozen suspects and declared victory over the bombers.

But the bombings in Dahab, though not as deadly as the previous two, displayed the underground group's resilience. Police say they were carried out by suicide bombers; they targeted a restaurant, a pedestrian bridge and a cluster of three shops owned by Egyptian Christians.

Egyptian authorities say that all the Sinai bombings have been the work of a single organization with no connections abroad, and no link to al-Qaeda.

Dissatisfaction among residents in parts of Sinai plays a role in feeding violence there, Egyptian officials say. Bedouins who inhabit the northern Sinai say they have been neglected by the central government in favor of the south, where the main resorts are located. They also express resentment at construction of a gas pipeline through the region to Israel, which they criticize for its treatment of the Palestinians. Mallahi was married to a Palestinian.

Nonetheless, the Egyptians acknowledge, Mallahi's group takes its inspiration from al-Qaeda and is known as Monotheism and Jihad -- the name once used by the Iraqi insurgent network now known as al-Qaeda in Iraq.

Egyptian officials told reporters that Bedouin trackers led police to Mallahi's hideout, and a suspect captured during Monday's shootout with Mallahi is a relative of Mosaed's.

Although the Egyptians continue to regard the Sinai bombings as a local matter, the attacks have stirred alarm in Israel because Sinai shares a long border with the Jewish state and is popular with Israeli tourists. On Monday, Israeli officials warned its citizens in Sinai to return home.