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| Africa North |
| Egypt says tourists released by bandidos, all safe and sound |
| 2008-09-23 |
| All 19 hostages seized on a safari in a remote desert border area of Egypt have been released and are safe, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said on Monday. "They have been released, all of them, safe and sound," he told reporters ahead of a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly. The captives were released near the Libyan-Sudanese-Egyptian border, he added. Masked kidnappers in Egypt have seized 19 hostages including German, Italian and Romanian tourists as well as Egyptians in a remote desert area near the Sudanese and Libyan borders, Egyptian officials said. Egyptian security sources said the kidnappers may have been from Sudan or Chad. The hostages were on a desert safari in southwestern Egypt when they were kidnapped. The kidnapping was the first of foreign tourists in Egypt in living memory, although Islamic militants have hit the country's tourist industry in recent decades through bomb and shooting attacks that have killed hundreds. "This is an act of banditry not of terrorism," the tourism ministry said. Security sources said there was no indication militant Islamists were involved. Egypt's army scoured the border area on Monday for signs of the tourists, who were believed to have been seized on Friday by four masked men while on a desert safari in a remote area where the borders of Egypt, Sudan and Libya meet. Tourism Minister Garrana said authorities learned of the kidnapping after a tour operator called his wife and told her he was being held hostage with the group. Egyptian state television said those held included an Egyptian border guard officer. Militant Islamists launched a series of attacks on tourists in the Nile Valley in the 1990s. But the Gamaa al-Islamiya, or Islamist Group, halted attacks amid popular uproar after six of its members slaughtered dozens of foreign tourists at Queen Hatshepsut's temple in the southern town of Luxor in 1997. The most recent attacks occurred between 2004 and 2006 in popular Red Sea resorts in the Sinai. In April 2006, 20 people were killed in bomb blasts in Dahab, 70 were killed in Sharm el-Sheikh in July 2005 and 34 people were killed in Taba in October 2004. In November 1997, 62 people including 58 foreign visitors were killed in an attack on a popular tourist site in the southern Nile resort of Luxor. More and more foreign visitors are visiting the remote southwest of Egypt near its borders with Sudan and Libya to see priceless rock art preserved for millennia in one of the most-isolated reaches of the Sahara. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Egyptian Tourism Minister Zoheir Garana said the tour company that organized the trip was mediating negotiations with the kidnappers, who were demanding up to $6 million in ransom. He said the German government — not the Egyptian — was involved in the talks. Germany’s Foreign Ministry would not confirm, saying only that it has formed a “crisis team” on the abduction. |
| Posted by: Classer 2008-09-23 02:28 |