Illegal feeding may have sparked a rampage by a killer shark that has terrorised holidaymakers in Egypt’s popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, a marine expert said yesterday.

Meanwhile, George Burgess, who heads the International Shark Attack File (ISAF), was in Sharm el-Sheikh to investigate the attacks along with a team of foreign experts.

“We think someone accustomed the sharks to being fed and whoever did it has stopped,” so the sharks started to look elsewhere for easy prey, Mohammed Salem, director of South Sinai Conservation, said.

The timing and location of three attacks in a week off Sharm el-Sheikh pointed to shark feeding which is banned in Egypt, he said.

“This is the biggest possibility.”

Mr Salem said the attacks occurred along a roughly eight-kilometre stretch of shore, including the busy Naama Bay, in the afternoons, suggesting the sharks had become used to being fed at around that time of day.

In the latest attack, a 70-year-old German woman was killed on Sunday when a shark ripped her apart as she was swimming in Naama Bay.

A shark expert who requested anonymity said “allegedly there are people, unresponsible operators, who have been feeding or trying to bait sharks with chicken”.

“It is really difficult to prove because there are no pictures or videos of them,” the expert said.

But General Ahmed al-Eledkawy, an aide to the South Sinai governor, dismissed the claim as “unreasonable”.

“Ask any skipper. They know it is dangerous. If the sharks’ behaviour is changed they might harm people,” the officer said when asked to comment about the possibility of sharks being lured by food.

Experts were trying seeking to learn what brought the sharks so close to the shore and if environmental change may have affected the feeding habits of the sharks.