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| Africa North |
| Bandits transfer Egypt tourist hostages to Libya |
| 2008-09-26 |
| The group of 19 hostages including 11 European tourists were transferred to Libya and the Sahara kidnappers holding them may be from one of the many rebel groups in Sudan's war-torn Darfur area, a Sudanese government spokesman said on Thursday. "There are indications that they may have been one of the rebel factions from Darfur," said Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry. The bandits have asked for Germany to be responsible for paying a ransom of six million euros, an Egyptian security official said on Thursday. "There are negotiations ongoing with the kidnappers now. The Egyptian negotiating team is working to get the hostages released in coordination with its Sudanese and German counterparts," the source told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press. "The kidnappers and the tourists have moved to Libya, about 13 to 15 kilometres (eight to nine miles) across the border," Yousuf told AFP. "All hostages are well, according to our information, and we are monitoring the situation." An Egyptian security official confirmed the group had moved. "They've been moved to Libya. Whether this is a release or a deepening of the crisis we don't know," he told AFP, asking not to be named. The group of five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian, as well as eight Egyptian drivers and guides, was snatched by masked bandits while on a desert safari from the Egyptian oasis of Dakhla to the Gilf al-Kabir plateau in the desert on Friday. The kidnapping, in a remote and thinly policed area near Egypt's borders with Sudan and Libya, is the first of its kind from Egyptian territory but has features in common with other kidnappings at the western end of the vast north African desert. The kidnappers have threatened to kill the hostages if authorities try to find them by plane, an Egyptian official said earlier the week, although the country's tourism minister was quoted on state media denying there was any such threat. There has been contradictory information about the identity of the kidnappers. Egyptian officials have said the kidnappers could be Sudanese or Chadian, while Sudanese officials have said they believed the hostage takers were Egyptian. Through phone calls between the owner of the adventure tour company, who is held captive with the tourists, and his German-born wife in Cairo, the kidnappers have asked for the ransom. Analysts say the kidnappers do not appear to have political or ideological motives, unlike the militant Islamists who attacked tourist targets in the Nile Valley and the Sinai Peninsula in the 1990s. But the incident is an embarrassment to the Egyptian government, which counts preserving law and order in a troubled region as one of its major achievements. Tourism accounts for over 6 percent of Egypt's gross domestic product. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Now you can send in the Bulgarian Medical Corps. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2008-09-26 16:30 |