The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [146]
On November 17, 1997, the glorious ruin looked out on the amber sand of the southern desert as it had for thirty-five centuries—long before Jesus or Mohammed or even Abraham, the father of the great monotheistic religions. The summer heat had ebbed, marking the beginning of the high season, and hundreds of tourists were strolling through the grounds, some in groups with Egyptian guides, others snapping photos and shopping in the kiosks.
Six young men dressed in black police uniforms and carrying vinyl bags entered the temple precinct shortly before nine in the morning. One of the men shot a guard, and then they all put on red headbands identifying themselves as members of the Islamic Group. Two of the attackers remained at the gate to await the shoot-out with the police, who never arrived. The other men crisscrossed the terraced temple grounds, mowing down tourists by shooting their legs, then methodically finishing them off with close shots to the head. They paused to mutilate some of the bodies with butcher knives. One elderly Japanese man was eviscerated. A pamphlet was later found stuffed in his body that said, “No to tourists in Egypt.” It was signed “Omar Abdul Rahman’s Squadron of Havoc and Destruction—the Gama‘a al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Group.”
Caught inside the temple, cowering behind the limestone colonnades, the tourists tried to hide, but there was no escape. It was a perfect trap. The screams of the victims were echoed by cries of “Allahu akhbar!” as the attackers reloaded. The killing went on for forty-five minutes, until the floors streamed with blood. The dead included a five-year-old British child and four Japanese couples on their honeymoons. The ornamented walls were splattered with brains and bits of hair.
When the job was done, the attackers hijacked a bus, looking for more tourists to kill, but at last they ran into a police checkpoint. In the shoot-out that followed, one of the attackers was wounded. His companions killed him, then fled into the hills, chased by tour guides and villagers on scooters and donkeys, who had little more to fight with than shovels and stones.
The attackers’ bodies were later found in a cave, arranged in a circle. The Egyptian press speculated that they had been murdered by the outraged village posse, but they apparently killed themselves in a ritualistic suicide. One of the men had a note in his pocket, apologizing for not carrying out the operation sooner.
Fifty-eight tourists and four Egyptians had died, not counting the attackers. It was the worst act of terror in modern Egyptian history. The majority of the victims—thirty-five of them—were Swiss; others came from Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Bulgaria, and Colombia. Seventeen other tourists and nine Egyptians were wounded. One Swiss woman had seen her father’s head cut off in front of her eyes.
The following day, the Islamic Group claimed credit for the attack. Rifai Taha said that the attackers were supposed to take hostages in order to free the imprisoned Islamist leaders, but the systematic slaughter put the lie to that claim. The death of the killers showed the influence of Zawahiri; until this point, the Islamic Group had never engaged in suicide operations. The Swiss federal police later determined that bin Laden had financed the operation.
Egypt was in shock. Revolted and ashamed, the population decisively turned against the Islamists, who suddenly began issuing retractions and pointing fingers in the usual directions. From prison, the blind sheikh blamed the Israelis, saying that Mossad had carried out the massacre. Zawahiri blamed the Egyptian police, who he said had done the actual killing, but he also held the victims responsible for coming to the country. “The people of Egypt consider the presence