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Everything Egypt: 1997 Deaths Changed Egyptian Tourism

Saturday, November 17, 2007

1997 Deaths Changed Egyptian Tourism


CAIRO, Egypt (AP) — The attack a decade ago was stunning, and is still recalled with horror: Islamic militants with knives and automatic weapons killed 58 foreign tourists — mainly Germans, Swiss and Japanese — at one of Egypt's most popular pharaonic temples. Some of the bodies were mutilated.
The Nov. 17, 1997, massacre at Hatshepsut temple in Luxor turned out to be the last gasp in the wave of Islamic militant violence that struck Egypt in the 1990s.
The 10th anniversary of the attack highlights the changes in Egypt since then — both in tourism and terrorism.
Over the years, the jailed leaders of the once-robust Islamic rebellion have called for an end to the violence after Egyptian security forces crushed the two main militant groups of the 1990s, Islamic Jihad and the Gamaa Islamiya.
Sayed Imam, a jailed ideologue of radical Islam, on Sunday is publishing "Revisions," a book in which he recants his past calls for the forceful overthrow of Arab governments seen as infidels.
The Nile Valley, once the heartland of violence, has not seen a major attack since the Hatshepsut slayings. But the nature of terrorism has now shifted: Since 2004, Egypt saw a string of deadly bombings on Red Sea beach resorts in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 121 people, including many tourists.

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