The fresh bombings on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula add to the mystery surrounding the culprits of the attacks. No group has claimed responsibility, and Egyptian authorities are urging people not to jump to conclusions.

Two blasts were reported in northern Sinai on Wednesday. Both targeted multinational peacekeepers stationed at camp Goura since 1982, following the Israel-Egypt peace treaty. Reports say the bombings were carried out by two human bombers, who only killed themselves but didn’t wound their targets.

A third incident was reported in the east of the Nile Delta, in which gunmen opened fire on a police checkpoint north-east of Cairo. There were no immediate reports of casualties and it wasn’t clear if Wednesday's attacks were related.

The fresh attacks come two days after a triple bombing in the Sinai resort town of Dahab claimed the lives of 23 people, mostly Egyptians, and wounded about 62 others. The blasts killed at least four foreigners - a Russian, a Swiss, a German child and a Lebanese national. Egyptian Interior Ministry officials said on Wednesday that some 80 suspects, mostly Sinai Bedouins, were questioned in connection with the explosions.

Dahab residents and holidaymakers were joined by Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif on Tuesday on a protest march through the town centre denouncing terrorism and stressing support for the tourism industry. Demonstrators were chanting, in English, “We love everybody” and were carrying banners reading “Salam”, or peace. The attacks, denounced by Egyptian President Muhammad Husni Mubarak as “wicked terrorist act”, were roundly condemned by Arab and international leaders. Syrian President Bashar Assad denounced the bombings as a "criminal act."

Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyya said they were an “odious crime, which undermines national security in Egypt." President Bush denounced the attacks as a "heinous act", and Britain’s Foreign Secretary Jack Straw condemned the "callous terrorists" behind them.

Hours after Monday's bombings, Western officials mentioned al-Qaeda as a possible culprit, without providing any evidence linking the terror group to the attacks.

But many security experts believe a shadowy Sinai-based group is more likely to be responsible. Some Western officials were also quick to draw a link between the attacks and a recent audiotape by Bin Laden in which he said that the West is waging war against Islam. However, most Egyptian officials have dismissed this connection, insisting that the attackers were locals without international connections.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the attackers were three Bedouin human bombers and some analysts suggest that the perpetrators were closely familiar with the area and timed them to coincide with Sham al-Nessim, a public holiday which marks the unofficial beginning of spring and the Sinai Liberation Day, which commemorates the date in 1979 when Sinai was given back to Egypt by Israel following the 1973 war.

''It could be a new group that has sprung up in Sinai because it knows the area and its targets well, it has the ability to gather information here and they are not known to the security authorities,'' political analyst Nabil Abdel-Fattah suggested.

But Western officials doubt that local Bedouins could mount such a deadly series of attacks without foreign help. “These are quite large-scale, coordinated (attacks). They presuppose serious organization, planning and so forth. These are not amateur,'' said Hugh Roberts, Cairo-based North Africa director at the International Crisis Group. ''This raises the question: Can it purely be attributed to local Sinai elements?”, he asked.

A Danish diplomat confirmed that no group claimed responsibility for the attacks, but said that a previously unknown organization has been mentioned. "I have heard reports from a few sources that Mansoura, a group I have not heard of, is responsible, but those are just unsubstantiated reports at the present moment," the diplomat said on condition of anonymity. Egyptian officials have said little about an ongoing military campaign against suspected terrorists in the wake of two earlier bomb attacks in Sinai-- in Taba in October 2004 and in Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005 -- that were attributed to a small Sinai-based group allegedly led by a man of Palestinian origin. The same group is also suspected of carrying out a bomb attack that wounded two Canadians near the Gura base in August 2005. But last week, the Egyptian government announced the arrest of 22 suspected members of a terrorist group, whose targets were said to include "degenerate youth in tourist areas."

Many Egyptians think that attacks were related to something that the Egyptian government has done recently. They said that they could be in response to a pending visit of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Egypt. "I feel this could be the beginning of many more attacks in Egypt," said Ahmed, a storeowner in Dahab. "I believe that we are being punished for what our government is doing, much like how Americans are being punished for their government's actions. It isn't right," he said. Like most of Dahab storeowners, Ahmed’s financial future was shaken by the attacks. Tourism is Egypt's largest source of foreign currency. The $7 billion industry makes up 10 percent of the Egyptian workforce, a figure President Mubarak is struggling to boost. "I hope people will continue to come, but I doubt they will for a while," Ahmad said. “Hopefully in the coming months we will get this under control and people will begin to respect us

[again]."

Whether carried out by al-Qaeda, a local group, or a combination of both, the recent attacks in Egypt inflicted their heaviest toll on the Egyptian people. "Whatever theory you want to believe, everyone sees these bombings as attacks on the Egyptian people, particularly the poorest of the Egyptian. They see it as an attack on the economy,” said Abdallah al-Ashaal, Egypt's former deputy foreign minister. Source: Aljazeera.com