(8 Oct 2004)
Egyptian/Israeli border
1. Various of ambulances racing through streets
2. Wide of Israeli/Egyptian border crossing
3. Israeli rescue workers
4. Police jeep
5. Israeli rescue workers heading towards border crossing
6. Various of Israeli tourists leaving Egypt
7. SOUNDBITE: (English) Vox pop, Israeli Tourist:
"I was at the beach and then I saw a big light on the beach and then I turned around behind me and then I saw a bomb go up from the light and then there was a boom and after five minutes, when I wanted to go back to my beach, I saw another bomb and another light and it was the same."
8. Israeli tourists crossing border
9. Ambulance driving back into Israel
10. Car driving back into Israel
11. Israeli tourists leaving Egypt
12. SOUNDBITE: (English) Vox pop, Israeli Tourist:
"Around ten o'clock we heard something. We don't know if we heard something or just a buzz that was going around and then people started to get information by phone about the first explosion in the Taba hotel, in the Hilton and afterwards there was a flow of information and half parts of information."
13. Israeli tourists running towards border
14. Israeli tourists running though border gate
Eilat, Israel
15. Various of Israeli tourists in a hotel ballroom (reception centre)
16. Various of people sleeping
17. Israeli tourists at reception centre
18. SOUNDBITE: (Arabic) Vox pop, Israeli Arab Tourist:
"There was a bomb and we all ran."
19. Tourist walking away
STORYLINE:
Israeli tourists, who had been holidaying in Egypt's Sinai peninsula, fled back across the border to Israel on Friday morning following a series of bomb attacks.
At least 35 people were killed and 160 wounded when an explosion apparently caused by a car bomb tore through a resort hotel in Taba where Israelis were vacationing at the end of a Jewish holiday.
Two smaller blasts also struck the area of Ras Shitan, a camping area near the town of Nuweiba south of Taba, witnesses said.
As news of the bomb attacks spread, Israeli tourists headed back towards the border to cross into Israel.
Some left without taking their luggage with them.
In the Israeli town of Eilat, seven kilometres from the Egyptian/Israeli border, reception centres were set up to accommodate those who had fled.
The huge blast in Taba caused the collapse of a ten-storey wing of the luxury hotel built by Israel when it controlled Taba from 1967 to 1989.
Israelis at the hotel described a chaotic scene as the explosion brought the top floors of the hotel crashing into the lobby.
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, issued on 9 September by the counter-terrorism centre in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office, identified the Sinai Peninsula as the target of a potential attack
A previously unknown group claimed responsibility for the Taba attack on a website that has been used frequently for such claims from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
There was no way to confirm the authenticity of the claim.
An Egyptian government spokesman linked the blasts to the Israeli military operation against the Palestinians in the neighbouring Gaza Strip, where 84 Palestinians have been killed in an Israeli offensive that began on 29 September to stop militants from firing homemade rockets into Israel.
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