The blasts, which began at about 1.15am local time, shook windows miles away. Smoke and fire could be seen rising from the Naama Bay area, a main strip of beach hotels, witnesses said.

Four car bombs are thought to have exploded in the car park of the Ghazala Gardens hotel, in Naama Bay.

Amal Mustafa, 28, an Egyptian who drove past the scene shortly afterwards, said that the hotel was “completely burnt down, destroyed”.

Khaled Sakran, a local resident, said that he saw the first blast from the Old Market area of the resort. “I saw the fire in the sky,” Mr Sakran said. “Right after, I saw a light in the sky and heard another explosion, coming from Naama Bay.”

The explosions caused panic in the resort as people rushed to go home for fear of more car bombs, one resident said.

A second blast was heard in the Old Market shortly after the hotel bombs and there were reports that a third explosion had caused part of a shopping precinct to collapse.

The first explosion could be heard more than half a mile away and shook windows in homes up to six miles away. It started a fire and smoke billowed across the town.

A British tourist told Sky News that there was little information being provided to guests at his hotel. “People are confused — I’ve seen some packing. They do not know what to do.”

Naama Bay has dozens of luxury hotels, popular with divers and holidaymakers from Europe and from neighbouring Israel. Another resident said that one of the explosions came from the direction of the Moevenpick Hotel, in Naama Bay, and broke the windows of his apartment.

Ahmed Fawzi, an Egyptian lawyer in Naama Bay on a business trip, said that one of the explosions ripped the door of his office off its hinges. When he went outside to find out what happened, bystanders said that four cars had exploded in the car park of the Moevenpick Hotel.

President Mubarak has a holiday villa in the neighbouring Golf Hotel.

In April three tourists were killed and others injured in two bombings in Cairo. In October 34 people were killed by car and truck bombs at resorts popular with Israelis, mostly at the Taba Hilton, on the border. Those attacks were further north, on the eastern coast of the Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt’s tourism industry was not badly affected by the bombings, but today’s attacks could severely test the confidence of travellers who already had some doubts about the area’s safety.

A decade ago the country’s reputation as a tourist destination was almost destroyed after a series of attacks on visitors in 1994. The worst occurred on November 17, when attackers killed 58 tourists and four Egyptians at an ancient temple near the southern tourist town of Luxor. Six gunmen and three police officers also died in the violence.

• Thousands of Muslim zealots protesting over the Pakistani Government’s measures against radical madrassas and mosques clashed with police in Islamabad yesterday.

  The protesters attacked a police post and set fire to an officer’s motorcycle as security forces rounded up 100 suspected militants in a nationwide campaign.

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