EGYPT: THREE COMPUTER EXPERTS ARRESTED OVER DAHAB ATTACKS, REPORT

Cairo, 26 April (AKI) - Egyptian police arrested three computer engineers from Cairo in connection with the terrorist attack on the Dahab resort in Egypt's Sinai peninsula which killed at least 18 people and wounded scores, a newspaper report said on Wednesday. Egyptian security sources told London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat the three men are accused of a key role in the attacks. The pan-Arabic paper did not specify whether the three were part of a group of ten suspects arrested on Tuesday. Investigators said the computer scientists allegedly left the scene of the attack half an hour before the three blasts.

The men - reportedly identified by the police as Faruq Muhammad Ali, Karim Ashraf Abdullah and Majid Ali Mahmoud - arrived in Dahab last Sunday.

They were arrested at a road block as they were returning to Cairo on Tuesday and produced fake documents to the police. One of them was reportedly wounded.

Egypt's interior ministry has confirmed 18 deaths, among them four foreigners - a Russian, a Swiss man, a German child and a Lebanese national. Earlier the ministry put the death toll at 23.

The three explosions on Monday night were probably from time bombs planted on the ground rather than carried by suicide bombers, investigators have said.

The bombings, the third similar attack in the Sinai peninsula in the past 18 months, are threatening Egypt's tourist industry, which brings in more than 7 billion dollars a year and employs around 10 percent of the country's workforce.