Italy lifts travel warning for Egypt resorts

Tourists at the Pyramids of Giza Rome - Arab Today Italy on Sunday lifted a travel warning for Egyptian beach resorts imposed last year but continued to advise tourists to stay away from other parts of the country, saying there was still “instability and turbulence”. The foreign ministry had issued the warning in August 2013 following Islamist president Mohamed Morsi’s ouster by the military and a crackdown on protests. In its statement on Sunday it said the government in Egypt had now ended a state of emergency and ceasefire. “There is however still a climate of instability and turbulence that could lead to clashes in squares in different parts of the country,” it said. “The ongoing and difficult phase of transition that Egypt has been going through in these months also prevents us from excluding the possibility of hostile or terrorist actions,” it said. Italian tourists have traditionally been among the most numerous visitors to the land of the Pyramids and around one million visited in 2010, the last year president Hosni Mubarak was in power. Egyptian authorities said 400,000 Italians visited the country’s resorts in 2013 before the travel warning. The decline in tourism since the fall of Mubarak has hobbled Egypt’s economy. Source: AFP