Rare hail stuns tourists in all-year-round resort

Tourists at the Egyptian beach resort city of Hurghada were caught off guard by a rare snowstorm which pelted beachgoers with egg-sized hail stones at the start of the new year.

Videos showed people rushing to the safety of their hotels as massive hail stones fell from the sky on Saturday. Some of the stones – which reportedly broke glass windows and roofs – appeared to be the size of a small quail egg.

In one video, tourists in beachwear could be seen trying to protect themselves from the storm with only their towels as one Russian woman could be heard saying, “These poor people are running from the beach. The hail must have caught them on the beach.”

Schools in the area were ordered to close on Sunday due to the storm, while Minister of Local Development Mahmoud Shaarawy advised people to stay away from potentially dangerous objects such as trees and lamp posts.

“Hurghada look likes a Moscow,” reacted one Egyptian woman on social media, while another person joked that Russian tourists spending New Year in the city probably “felt at home.”

Hurghada is extremely popular with Russian tourists, with dozens of charter flights from Russia landing at the Red Sea resort every day. The flights were resumed in November after a six-year-long suspension following a 2015 terrorist attack targeting a Russian passenger plane travelling from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. Regular flights between Russia and Egypt were resumed back in August last year.

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