By Chung Min-uck
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced Wednesday an expansion of its travel alert imposed on parts of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula to the entire peninsula in the light of the latest terrorist attack against Korean tourists in mid-February, according to the ministry.
“We have decided to expand the current Level 3 Travel Alert (Travel Restricted) to the entire region of the Sinai Peninsula (excluding Sharm El Sheikh) starting from Feb. 25,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Level 3 Travel Alert, which admonishes travelers to leave the area unless they have to attend to urgent and essential businesses, was previously imposed only on some inland areas of Sinai and the coastal areas of the Gulf of Aqaba.
Concerning the dangerous inlands of Sinai and the coasts, MOFA has already issued Special Travel Alerts restricting Korean citizens from entering and requesting the immediate withdrawal of those currently there.
Four people, including three Koreans and one Egyptian bus driver, were killed on Feb. 16 in a bombing attack on a tourist bus that was carrying 31 South Korean Christians, as well as Korean and Egyptian tour guides, in Egypt’s bustling tourist destination of the Sinai Peninsula.
As of last week, all of the Korean survivors from the terrorist attack in Egypt returned home with some of them sent straight to hospital for treatment of their injuries.
The Korean travelers were members of a church in the central South Korean county of Jincheon on a pilgrimage tour there when an unidentified man with explosives attached to his waist reportedly went aboard the bus and detonated the explosives in an apparent suicide attack. The bomber was reportedly also found dead.
Meanwhile, an al-Qaida-inspired group called Ansar Beit al-Maqdis recently claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Egyptian government is still investigating.
MOFA is further trying to locate and evacuate Korean travelers in the Egypt area.
A message on a Twitter account reportedly operated by the terrorist group last week warned that any foreign travelers in Egypt could be the next target of an attack if they do not leave the country in four days. There have been conflicting reports about whether the account is genuine.