What is the Foreign and Commonwealth Office saying about travel to Egypt?

The FCO is not advising against travelling to the area. It warns that there is “a high level of threat from terrorism” in the area and lists attacks going back to October last year.

There is a distinct policy at the FCO now to avoid warning against travel to any particular country, a policy that stems from the Bali bombings nearly three years ago when many accused the FCO of heavy handedness causing billions in lost tourism revenue.

The worldwide threat of terrorism is another factor in not discriminating against one country ahead of another. So the FCO has maintained its "high level" warnings that existed before Saturday.

But didn't the FCO change its advice after the Cairo bombs in April?

Yes, but again the level of warnings fell short of a don't go statement. Seven died in three separate attacks in April and the FCO did upgrade its advice, on May 3, to a more specific statement that further terrorist attacks in Cairo "cannot be ruled out." The advice was downgraded within days.

It seems that whatever the FCO does or doesn't advice, Egypt is getting more dangerous.

The three attacks within a month in Cairo followed a bombing rampage in the Sinai last October which killed 34 people and injured 159, including tourists. There were three explosions in and around the Hilton in Taba, a Red Sea resort close to the Israeli border, at the northern tip of the Gulf of Aqaba, 15 kilometres from the newly developed resort of Taba Heights

Tourists have very much been the targets in that attack, in at least one of the Cairo bombings and on Saturday. Which is in contradiction to political analysts saying in April that recent attacks in Egypt appeared to be against foreigners rather than the tourism industry, which Islamist militants targeted in Egypt in the 1990s.

“What has happened was against foreigners and not against tourism. It’s very close to what happened in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait and in Qatar,” said one analystm Dia Rashwan, referring to other attacks in recent months attributed to Islamist militants.

How many tourists visit Egypt?

Eight million visited last year to see Pharaonic sites and holiday at Red Sea resorts and provide the country with an important source of foreign currency. Before Saturday's bombings, the worst attack in Egypt happened in 1997 at a Pharaonic temple near the southern town of Luxor, when 58 tourists died - and it took a long time for the country's tourism industry to recover.

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