At least two foreign tourists have been stabbed in the attack.
Advertisement
The attackers carried out an attack from the Red Sea, a Reuters report said.
Arriving by sea, gunmen stormed the Bella Vista hotel in the Egyptian Red Sea resort city of Hurghada.
Security forces opened fire at the two assailants, killing one and seriously wounding the other, according to the ministry.
Islamic State’s Egypt affiliate is waging an insurgency based in the Sinai which has mostly targeted soldiers and policemen.
Egypt has been battling Islamist militants for sometime now, dealing with the spillover of terror that ensued after the ousting of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi back in 2013.
Journalist Sally Nabil in Cairo said Hurghada remained on high alert with all roads in and out closed off. Police forces were still searching for possible further attackers, she said. No one was reported hurt in that attack.
“The motive of the attack is unknown, and it is confirmed that one attacker is in custody and the other was killed by security forces”, a ministry statement said.
The German Foreign Ministry advised its citizens Friday to avoid leaving their hotels in the city, which is located about 55 miles southwest of Sharm el Sheik.
Breitbart Jerusalem reports that the Islamic State jihadis were motivated by “Caliph” Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s call to “target Jews everywhere”, according to the IS-linked Amaq News Agency.
An official of the Egyptian Health Ministry’s in the Red Sea province told previously that a couple from Austria and a Swedish citizen were wounded in the attack. It said one of the attackers was a student from the Cairo suburb of Giza.
Advertisement
The political turmoil in Egypt since 2011 and heightened activity by terrorists in Sinai have resulted in a sharp decline in the number of Jewish Israeli tourists to Egypt, though thousands of Arab Israelis still travel there regularly.
