Same shark linked to three attacks

A single female whitetip shark has been linked to at least three out of five attacks on tourists at a popular Egyptian Red Sea resort, and is still in the area, an expert helping investigators said.

Three Russians and a Ukrainian were attacked off Sharm el-Sheikh in the space of two days last week, suffering severe injuries.

On Sunday a 70-year-old German woman snorkeller died after a shark tore a piece out of her thigh and severed her forearm.

It was the first death from a shark attack in Egypt since 2004. Officials had just lifted a ban on swimming in the area imposed after the first attacks.

A whitetip seen minutes before the first attacks on two of the Russians has been identified as the shark photographed when the German woman was attacked five days later, said Elke Bojanowski, an expert on the Red Sea's whitetip sharks.

She said the shark still appeared to be in the area.

"Instead of briefly grabbing for testing or tasting purposes, this female apparently considers human swimmers as a potential food source," she said.

An international team of scientists was interviewing witnesses, studying the environment and gathering data from local divers to understand the shark's behavior.

Speculation has centered on the practice of luring sharks with bait, or chum, to film them, causing them to associate humans with food, or a depletion of fish stocks that could force them to seek alternative food sources.

Some experts suggest that sheep and cattle that died while being shipped in for last month's Muslim feast of Eid el-Adha might have been thrown overboard in the Red Sea. If they had drifted to shallow waters, this might have encouraged sharks to bite anything unusual floating on the sea surface.

"There are lots of rumors going around here in Sharm but few facts," said Jochen Van Lysebettens, head of the Red Sea Diving College in Sharm. "My personal view is the behavior of the sharks must have been triggered by their feeding off something unusual in the water - chum, fish or carcasses."

Egypt's government said on Thursday it would pay $50,000 in compensation to each of the Russians who were attacked.

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