He cracked down severely on his leftist opponents reportedly coming back from a

He cracked down severely on his leftist opponents, reportedly coming back from a rally in Battambang with a lorryload of severed heads. The king had signed a secret pact with the Vietcong in 1969, allowing them a supply route through his territory. America responded with a massive covert bombing campaign to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail. His early efforts to manipulate the constitution to enhance the monarch’s powers were unsuccessful, but he was insistent on ruling and won the votes he needed to assume high office.Although Sihanouk took pains to present his country as neutral during the ruinous Vietnam conflict, violence eventually spilt over his borders. The claim described the attacks as a message to the Palestinians, Muslims everywhere, and the Israeli government and people.Contributors to those Web sites were praising the explosions and linking them to a recent video tape said to have been issued by al-Qa’ida’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.The explosions came a month after the Israeli government urged citizens not to visit Egypt, citing a “concrete” terror threat to tourists in an area. The warning identified the Sinai Peninsula as the target of a potential attack.The security adviser to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Jibril Rajoub, said that no Palestinian factions were responsible for the explosions.Four hours after the blast, Israel’s military took command of the scene, according to the army spokeswoman, Brigadier General Ruth Yaron, but there were delays in sending Israeli forces and rescue workers across the tense border.Shimon Romah, an Israeli fire chief, said rescue workers lost precious time because they were unable to bring heavy equipment to Taba for several hours.”This was just a travesty, because these were four critical hours,” Romah said.Thousands of frightened Israeli tourists rushed back home, streaming into Eilat today. Association of British Travel Agents spokeswoman Frances Tuke said: “We understand that all 19 are out of the hotel and all are safe.”.

Hostage Ken Bigley was feared dead today after a Middle East TV station reported it had video footage said to show his execution. Longwood Holidays, of Woodford Green, east London, had 19 British clients in the Hilton Taba. Nor was there any indication whether the attack on the relatively soft target of Israeli tourists in a neighbouring Arab country was in any way connected with the nine-day incursion by Israeli forces into the northern Gaza strip. Israeli forces entered the strip once again after two small children were killed by a Palestinian Qassam rocket fired at the Israeli border town of Sderot last week.Hamas officials in Gaza also declared after the assassination of one of its senior official in Damascus last week that Israelis abroad would be vulnerable to retaliatory attacks, though this threat was subsequently downplayed by leaders of the faction in Syria. I am standing outside of the hotel, the whole thing is burning and they have nothing to put it out with.” He said most of the people at the Hilton were Israeli “I was in the casino when it happened,” he said “There was a massive explosion, and the left wall came down. People started to run around like crazy.”The official warning, issued on 9 September by the counter-terrorism centre in the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office, identified Egypt’s Sinai peninsula as the likely target of a potential attack. “Recently a concrete possibility has emerged that terrorists will try to attack tourist centres in Egypt, especially the Sinai,” the Israeli Foreign Ministry had said in a statement published on its website.Despite speculation that the militant Palestinian faction Hamas could be to blame for last night’s blasts, there was no immediate claim of responsibility.

A Ras al Sitan human rights activist, Abdel Raziq, said: “I heard one very big explosion coming from the Taba direction and then, after a while, I heard two smaller explosions from Nuweiba.”In Taba, a witness to the Hilton explosion, Yigal Vakni, told Israel Radio: “The whole front of the hotel has collapsed There are dozens of people on the floor, lots of blood It is very tense. Once again, however, Israeli tourists had flocked to the Sinai during the Jewish holiday.The other two, smaller, blasts occurred in Nuweiba, part of the area of Ras al Shitan, a camping area also highly popular with Israeli tourists. But the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the explosion had taken place in the hotel lobby.Although Egypt has seen several militant attacks aimed at tourists before, this looked last night to be the first specifically aimed at Israeli visitors, who had been explicitly warned last month against travel to the resorts of the Sinai peninsula in Egypt, one of only two Arab countries with which Israel enjoys a full treaty. An explosion ripped through the Hilton hotel in Taba, an Egyptian resort packed with Israeli tourists, last night in the worst of three blasts which hospital officials said claimed the lives of at least 29 people. Even after the Luxor attack in 1997, the UK government stopped short of warning against visits to Egypt.TOURISTS UNDER FIRE IN EGYPT1992: A British woman becomes the first foreigner killed by militants in Egypt when a tourist bus is ambushed1993: Bomb is thrown near a tourist bus in Cairo1994:A British tourist en route to a temple in southern Egypt is killed and three wounded when their minibus is machine-gunned1995: A Dutch man and French woman are killed when militants fire on a passenger train in southern Egypt1996: 17 Greeks and an Egyptian shot dead outside a hotel in Cairo near the PyramidsSeptember 1997: Six German tourists and three Egyptians killed by gunmen outside the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir SquareNovember 1997: Gunmen massacre 58 tourists in Luxor. From Taba Heights, there are stunning views of the Red Sea – as well as across Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and their heavily fortified borders.The timing of last night’s bombings have coincided with the seven-day Sukkot Jewish holiday, which traditionally results in 10,000 Israelis crossing the border to the Sinai peninsula.