'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

[Gert van der Hoek]

'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

Around 15 people, many of them tourists, are reported to have been kidnapped in southern Egypt.

Five Italians, Germans and Egyptians were reported to be among the tourists seized near Aswan, though the details of the abduction were unclear.

The Italian foreign ministry said it had set up a crisis unit to deal with the incident.

There were unconfirmed reports that the group may have been taken across the border into Sudan.

But Egyptian officials said the circumstances of the abduction remained unclear.

"We don't know yet who did this and we don't know the whereabouts of the tourists," an official told the Associated Press.

There were initially reports that the group included Israeli tourists - but Israelis were not mentioned in later reports.

Kidnaps of foreigners in Egypt have been very uncommon in recent years.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7629171.stm

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: 'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

Bandits take kidnapped tourists from Egypt to Sudan

CAIRO (AFP) — Masked bandits kidnapped a group of 19 foreign tourists and Egyptians at gunpoint as they were on a desert safari in a remote corner of southwestern Egypt and took them to Sudan, officials said Monday.

"This is an act of banditry not of terrorism," the tourism ministry said in a statement, adding that those responsible have asked for an undisclosed sum of money as a ransom.

"Four masked gunmen attacked the four cars they were riding and led them towards Sudanese territory at gunpoint," the state MENA news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying.

The tourism ministry said the kidnapping happened on Friday but authorities only became aware when the tour company owner, who is among the missing, used a satellite telephone to call his German wife and tell her of the ransom demand.

Tourism Minister Zuhair Garana initially said negotiations were under way to release the group, MENA reported, but later told state television that there were no negotiations or official contacts with the kidnappers.

"According to the information we have the hostages are in Sudanese territory but we don't know where," Garana told AFP. "The Egyptian government doesn't negotiate but the security services are trying to locate the hostages."

"The contacts are with the wife of the agency owner, they're telling her their demands and security services are in contact with her."

MENA said they were on a safari in Karak Talh near Gilf el-Kabir , a rugged and largely uninhabited region near the border with Sudan.

Cabinet spokesman Magdi Radi told MENA that Egyptian authorities were "in contact with the Sudanese side to release the tourists."

A spokesman for Sudan's Northern State, which borders Egypt and Libya to the north and west and the war-torn Darfur region to the south, told AFP that "until now we have no information about this" abduction.

The tourism ministry said those snatched included five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian, while MENA said two Egyptian guides, four drivers, a guard and the tour company owner were also abducted.

Egyptian sources said the kidnappers had asked for between four and six million dollars in ransom, although it was not possible to confirm this.

more: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gLBCehJqOB3vqx83csY1DaPBP25w

 

[Shiloh]

Re: 'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7630504.stm

Tourists abducted in Egypt 'free'
Breaking News

Eleven European tourists and eight Egyptians kidnapped in southern Egypt have been released and are safe, the country's foreign minister says.

The five Italians, five Germans and a Romanian had been abducted along with eight Egyptian travel guides and drivers last Friday.

The abduction took place near the Gilf al-Kebir plateau, close to the Libyan and Sudanese borders.

Egypt had said the kidnappers were bandits who had demanded a ransom.

Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit announced the news of the release in New York.

More soon.

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: 'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

Sudan desert gunfight kills 6 accused in abduction

By MOHAMED OSMAN ?

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) ? Eight kidnappers of a group of European tourists and their Egyptian guides led soldiers on a high-speed desert chase Sunday, ending in a firefight that killed all but two of the gunmen, Sudan's military spokesman said.

The two surviving kidnappers told Sudanese soldiers that the tourists were being held by 35 more gunmen in Chad, said the spokesman, Sawarmy Khaled.

The desert safari tour of 11 Europeans and eight Egyptians was seized by gunmen deep in the southern Egyptian deserts Sept. 19 and the victims have apparently been shuttled around in the remote region where Sudan, Chad, Egypt and Libya share borders.

Khaled told The Associated Press that Sudanese soldiers were searching south of the Jebel Oweinat region near the Libyan border when they came upon a white vehicle carrying eight gunmen.

"The armed forces called for it to stop, but they did not respond and there was pursuit in which six of the armed men were killed," he said, including the leader of the group, which he identified as a Chadian named Bakhit.

A subsequent statement from Brig. Gen. Mohamed Osman al-Aghbash, the Defense Ministry spokesman, said five soldiers were wounded in the chase, including the unit's second-in-command, a first lieutenant, who was described as in grievous condition.

The statement said a second vehicle, described as a "tourist bus" labeled "Interville" and with Egyptian license plates was confiscated along with assault rifles, ammunition and rocket- propelled grenades.

The ministry said documents bearing the logo of a Darfur rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Movement, were also seized from the bandits.

Mohammed Abdullah, a commander of the rebel group in northern Darfur, denied involvement in the kidnapping, calling it an act of banditry. He accused Sudan of fabricating the news to implicate his movement in the kidnapping and distract from the government's "crimes against the people of Darfur."

Darfur rebel movements and government forces are locked in a bitter battles several hundred miles south of where the kidnapping occurred.

The kidnapping highlighted how easy it is for bandits to cross the vast, unguarded desert borders, marked only by the occasional wooden signpost in the sand.

Gunmen seized 11 Italians, Germans and Romanians and their eight Egyptian guides and drivers and fled into Sudan. On Thursday, Sudanese officials said the kidnappers had moved again, into Libya, but Libyan officials said they couldn't find them.

German officials have been negotiating with the kidnappers, who are demanding millions of dollars in ransom, but there has been no word on progress.

The vast majority of Egypt's 9 million tourists each year visit pharaonic sites along the Nile River or Red Sea beach resorts, far from the Western Desert and the Gilf al-Kebir.

But the Gilf, a plateau 500 miles southwest of Cairo, draws some adventure tourists with its sand dunes and desert cliffs, as well as a trove of prehistoric cave art. Around 2,000 tourists visited the area in the past year, up from only a handful a year less than a decade ago.

Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb and Omar Sinan in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5isq5m31cqXYQijmvw6cfrqoT6A9QD93FTCNG3

 

[Gert van der Hoek]

Re: 'Fifteen people seized' in Egypt

Commando raid frees tour group seized in Egypt

By PAUL SCHEMM and MAAMOUN YOUSSEF, Associated Press Writers

Mon Sep 29, 9:58 AM ET

CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian and Sudanese troops rescued an abducted 19-member European tour group in an assault on the kidnappers in the remote Sahara borderland, officials said. The tourists and their Egyptian guides returned safely to Cairo on Monday.

The operation, apparently backed by European special forces, ends a 10-day hostage drama that took the 11 Europeans and their eight drivers and guides across a barren stretch of the Sahara Desert. They were seized by gunmen on Sept. 19 while on a desert safari in remote southwestern Egypt. Their abductors took them to Sudan. Reports followed that they were then taken to Libya, or perhaps even Chad.

An Egyptian security official said they were rescued in a joint operation near the Sudanese-Chadian border late Sunday or early Monday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Egyptian Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi said "half the kidnappers" were killed in the rescue operation, according to the state news agency MENA, but the report did not give a precise number or give details on the rescue.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini suggested Italian and German special forces were involved. He told the Sky TG24 news channel that Sudan and Egypt carried out "a highly professional operation" with the "intervention of Italian intelligence and experts from the special forces" from Germany and Italy.

The break in the hunt for the tourists came Sunday, when Sudanese forces engaged a group of the kidnappers in a gunbattle in northwest Sudan who had been sent out to get gas and food, the Egyptian security official said. Six kidnappers were killed in that fight, and two captured. The two told the authorities where the rest of the kidnappers and their captives were hiding, the official said.

The Sudanese and Egyptian militaries, using two helicopters, then launched the assault that freed the captives, two security officials said. One said there was an exchange of fire and that the hostages were freed inside Chadian territory, but there was no confirmation of where exactly the assault took place. Many of the borders in the desert region are unmarked and easily crossed.

The official said the tourists, who include two Italians in their 70s, were "feeble" but in good health. MENA reported that none of the captives was hurt in the rescue.

The freed captives, who included five Germans, five Italians, a Romanian and eight Egyptian guides and drivers, were brought by a military plane to Cairo on Monday, greeted at the airport by officials bearing bouquets of flowers. They were then taken to a military hospital for checkups.

"Our compatriots and the other hostages in Egypt have been freed," Frattini was quoted as saying by Italy's ANSA news agency. "It is the result of international cooperation for which we have to be really grateful to the authorities of other countries that have been working with us."

Frattini said no ransom was paid.

The kidnappers had reportedly been asking for up to $15 million. German authorities had been negotiating with them by phone, according to Egyptian officials, while Sudanese and Egyptian forces working with Germany and Italy were searching the deserts for the abducted group.

The kidnappers were believed to be armed desert tribesmen. Tour operators working in Egypt's Western Desert have reported several robberies of tourists in the area by heavily armed gunmen in SUVs and expressed fears the violence could be a spillover from the conflicts in eastern Chad and Sudan's war-torn Darfur.

The tour group was abducted while visiting the Gilf al-Kebir, a desert plateau famous for its prehistoric cave paintings. It is one of the most remote, little-visited sites in Egypt, lying in the country's far southwestern corner near the Sudanese and Libyan borders.

Eastern Chad and Darfur lie about 200-250 miles away across largely unguarded desert terrain. Both areas have become notorious for carjackings and other robberies by armed bands.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080929...ed_tourists;_ylt=Ase8OyQvG.47UXVTiLLTsLlvaA8F