The attacker who was killed was apparently wearing a suicide vest.
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The Interior Ministry, which is in charge of police, said two men armed with knives had entered the restaurant at the front of the seaside, four-star Bella Vista Hotel and attacked the tourists.
The hotel posted on its Facebook page pictures of the two other victims, spelled in hospital records as Renata Weisslen and Wilhem Weislan, both smiling.
On Thursday a gang of youths hurled fireworks and birdshot at a bus and police guarding Cairo’s Three Pyramids Hotel near the pyramids of Giza, without hurting anyone, according to officials and witnesses.
The assailants were aiming to kidnap tourists and one wore an explosive belt, Egyptian officials told the BBC. Security forces apprehended one person who was hiding behind the hotel the ministry said.
The attacks are the latest attempts by ISIS-affiliated militants to drive away tourism, an important source of funding for Egypt’s economy, according to BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the shooting in which there were no casualties.
Police and security are ramped up outside a hotel where two attackers opened fire in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, Egypt, January 8, 2016.
The group’s Egypt affiliate has claimed credit in the past for similar attacks in the capital and the Sinai Peninsula, where its insurgency is based.
Egypt has been suffering growing anti-government terrorist attacks that killed hundreds of policemen and soldiers since the ouster of former Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in July 2013 in response to mass protests against his one-year rule.
Years of violence in Egypt have been a heavy blow to Egypt’s tourism sector.
The IS group also claimed responsibility for the October 31 downing of a Russian passenger plane that crashed over the Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, a lot of them tourists returning home from the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh.
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The resort area attracts many tourists, specifically local Egyptian tourists from Cairo, the Delta, and Upper Egypt, and has drawn favorable interest from European tourists due to their holiday packages, notably Italians and Germans.
