There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts, but the attack bore many of the hallmarks of a mysterious group that has set off two other clusters of bombs on Egypt's Red Sea coast in the last two years.

Sixty-two people were also wounded in the bombings on Monday evening.

"These were bombs that contained gunpowder and nails and were fitted with timers," said one of the officials, who asked not to be named. "It was very crowded and that's what increased the number of casualties."

A witness, Hussein Abdel Rahman, said that when he went to one of the locations moments after the blasts later he saw no remains of anyone who might have been the bomber.

"The only people hurt were the workers and the German children -- I didn't see the body of any bomber," said Abdel Rahman, a meat distributor who was working in his shop at the time.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry said a young German boy was killed in the explosions, along with two other foreigners and 20 Egyptians.

Inspection of the area where one bomb went off showed no sign of blood in the immediate vicinity, whereas there were significant quantities of blood further away.

The governor of South Sinai province, Mohamed Hani, said on Monday night he thought suicide bombers were responsible. The Dubai-based Al Arabiya television on Tuesday quoted a security source as saying that at least two suicide bombers had died in the blasts.

The injured included about 40 Egyptians, three Danes, three Britons, two Italians, two Germans, two French people, a South Korean, a Lebanese, a Palestinian, an American, an Israeli and an Australian, the Interior Ministry said.

It was the third set of attacks in Sinai since October 2004, when a small Sinai-based group attacked the Hilton hotel in the Taba resort, close to the Israeli border, and two beach camps.

The attacks on Taba, and then the upmarket resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to the south in July 2005, killed 67 people.

The target this time was the budget resort of Dahab, a beach and diving centre popular with backpackers.

On Tuesday morning, pools and trails of blood remained on a long stretch of the beach promenade, which is lined with restaurants on the seaward side and souvenir shops on the other.

"We saw many dead people. People were screaming," said a cafe worker near the scene of one explosion, who like many other witnesses requested anonymity.

A RESTAURANT, A CAFE AND A SUPERMARKET

In all cases, three bombs went off within minutes of each other on the evening of a holiday. In some cases the bombers used trucks, in others they left explosives in suitcases.

Witnesses who saw the damage in Sharm el-Sheikh said the bombs appeared to be smaller this time. Several government officials called the devices simple or primitive.

The Interior Ministry said the targets were a restaurant, a cafe and a supermarket in the resort, which lies 80 km (50 miles) north of Sharm el-Sheikh.

At the Lantern, a Chinese restaurant on the beachfront, one employee said he had been inside when he heard the first of the bombs at about 7:10 p.m. (1710 GMT).

"I came outside and saw a person on fire and others with cuts on their head and arms. Some people had lost their fingers or their feet," said the worker, who called himself Ahmed.

"The summer is just coming and there were lots of bookings but now it will be a disaster."

After the previous attacks, many tourists cut short their holidays and went home. But the resorts largely recovered within months, despite occasional warnings that the Sinai group could still be active.

The Egyptian authorities say the Sinai group was founded by a man of Palestinian origin who grew up in the north Sinai town of El Arish and adopted the views of militant Islamists.

They say the group has no known links with foreign organisations such as the al Qaeda group of Osama bin Laden.

The alleged founder, Iyad Said Saleh, died in the bombing at the Taba Hilton, apparently because he set the timer of his bomb wrongly, Egyptian police said at the time.

The Interior Ministry says police killed several other important members over the next few months after deploying across the rugged mountains of the peninsula.

The Sharm el-Sheikh bombings thwarted the government's plans to attract 9 million tourists to the country in 2005.

Coupled with a strong Egyptian pound and weaker European economies, it held growth in tourism down to 5 percent, with 8.5 million people visiting the country.

Tourists, who come for the beaches and the pharaonic monuments, bring in more than $7 billion a year.