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Last update - 17:49 23/09/2008
Egypt: Kidnappers threaten to kill 19 tourists seized as hostages
By News Agencies
Tags: Egypt, Sudan, kidnap, Israel

The kidnappers who seized 19 hostages including European tourists in a remote desert area of Egypt have threatened to kill them if attempts are made to find them by plane, an Egyptian official said on Tuesday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the kidnapped tour operator contacted his German wife and told her of the threat, which she reported to Egyptian authorities.

The masked kidnappers took the 19 people -- five Italians, five Germans, a Romanian and eight Egyptians -- while they were on an adventure safari in southwestern Egypt on Friday.
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It was the first time foreign tourists had been kidnapped in Egypt and the case posed a new challenge to the security-conscious government in a country which depends on foreign tourism accounts for 6 percent of the national economy.

Islamic militants have hit the country's tourist industry in recent decades with bomb and gun attacks that have killed hundreds.

The official said Egyptian authorities had traced to Sudan calls from the kidnappers to the tour operator's German wife.

The Egyptian state-owned daily newspaper al-Ahram on Tuesday quoted Tourism Minister Zoheir Garrana as saying the hostages were all in good health, and that German authorities were in talks with the kidnappers over the ransom.

Security sources said on Monday the kidnappers were demanding 6 million euros to free the hostages, and said there was no sign militant Islamists were involved.

A security source said Egyptian authorities were also in talks with the kidnappers.

Egypt's foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said at the United Nations on Monday that the tourists had been freed and were safe and sound, but officials later denied that account.

Garrana told Egyptian television on Monday that the kidnappers were "most likely" Sudanese.

The desert area where the borders of Egypt, Sudan and Libya meet is thinly policed and is close to chronic conflicts in Darfur in western Sudan and in eastern Chad.

Gilf al-Kebir, where the tourists were heading, attracts adventure travellers with dramatic landscapes including a massive crater and the Cave of the Swimmers, whose prehistoric paintings won fame through the 1996 film "The English Patient".

Attacks on tourists in the Nile Valley and the nearby deserts have been rare in recent years, though a series of bombings targeted tourists in the Sinai Peninsula between 2004 and 2006. The Egyptian government blamed the Sinai attacks on Bedouin with militant views.

Militant Islamists launched a series of attacks on tourists in the Nile Valley in the 1990s. But the Gama'a al-Islamiya, or Islamic 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.

Al Qaeda often condemns Egypt's government as a corrupt U.S. puppet and calls for its overthrow. Deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said in a message this month it was among governments "imposed by the Crusader-Zionist campaign (on Islam)".

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Hussam Zaki said later that the minister was citing unconfirmed reports.

"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 United Nations General Assembly. "It was a group of gangsters."

Kidnappers, believed to be tribesmen, snatched 11 foreign tourists and eight Egyptians during an adventure safari to one of Egypt's most remote sites deep in the Sahara Desert on Monday.

Officials had said earlier Monday that the kidnappers were demanding millions of dollars in ransom.

The German, Italian and Romanian tourists were visiting the Gilf al-Kabir, an isolated desert plateau famed for its prehistoric cave paintings, including the Cave of the Swimmers, immortalized in the 1996 movie The English Patient.

Only a few intrepid visitors make the daunting trek of more than a week in 4X4s across the desert to the Gilf, which lies near the Libyan and Sudanese borders beyond a vast plain of dunes known as the Great Sand Sea, one of the most arid places on Earth.

But it has become increasingly popular among adventure and eco-tourists. They are drawn by the stark desert landscapes and the prehistoric paintings in caves that dot the plateau. The Cave of the Swimmers features 10,000-year-old paintings of people swimming, a hallmark of a time when scientists believe parts of the Sahara were fertile, with lakes and rivers.

The unpopulated region is also a crossroads for ethnic African tribesmen - including smugglers - from Libya, Sudan and even Chad, further south. It borders Sudan's wartorn Darfur region, where many armed bands operate and have become notorious for robberies and hijackings.

Government spokesman Magdi Rady said it was feared the kidnappers had taken their captives into Sudan.

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.

The group of five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian were seized Friday along with their Egyptian guides and drivers while camping near the Sudanese border, Garana said.

The abduction was only discovered because the Egyptian owner of the tour company, who was on the trip, was able to call his German wife by mobile phone, Garana told state television. The group included eight Egyptians, he said, correcting earlier reports of four.

The tour owner told his wife that a group of armed men, who appeared African, drove up to the group while they were setting up their tents, an Egyptian security official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the press.

The kidnapped Italians included three women and two men from the Turin area, Italy's ANSA news agency said.

Rady said the abduction was not connected to Islamic militants, who have previously attacked tourists in southern Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula. "This is a criminal act, they are seeking a ransom," he said.

A tour guide who operates in the area said colleagues in the Western Desert told him the kidnappers were tribesmen. Mohammed Marzouk said there have been previous robberies in the area, most recently in May, when tribesmen seized two tour company SUVs during a desert trip.

The Gilf al-Kabir, some 550 miles (900 kilometers) southwest of Cairo, is one of the last frontiers in Egypt, explored by a few Egyptian and European expeditions in the early 20th Century. The Cave of the Swimmers was discovered in a niche in the cliff face in 1933 by Hungarian explorer Laslo Almasy. But the Gilf has largely been ignored since until it gained the recent notice of adventure travelers.

The Gilf is a giant limestone and sandstone plateau - bigger than Delaware or the island of Cyprus and nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters) high at some points, separated from the rest of Egypt by a vast sea of sand dunes.

The plateau is creased with wadis, or dry river valleys, producing dramatic landscapes of dunes washing up against high black cliff faces. The wadis are pockmarked with caves holding one of the richest troves of Neolithic cave art in Africa. Rock faces are covered with red and black paintings of lions, gazelles, bullocks, giraffes and people hunting, as well as silhouettes of hands. Tour guides at times still boast of discovering new cave paintings.

Tourists are required to get permits from the military to visit the site and must travel in tour groups with at least one security guard. The tour, done in desert 4X4s, can take more than 12 days.

But, as in other places, expanding adventure tourism may be moving closer to zones of instability. Earlier this year, the annual Dakar Rally through the Western Sahara was cancelled because of al-Qaida threats of attacks.

The Gilf lies on routes often used by smugglers of drugs and other merchandise between Libya, Egypt and Sudan. It also lies near the desert regions of Darfur and Chad, where raging conflicts have given rise to armed groups who live off of banditry
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  1.   Here We Go Again 13:56  |  Phil 22/09/08
  2.   No ransom 14:02  |  Charlie 22/09/08
  3.   Kidnapped Israelis. 14:13  |  Alan 22/09/08
  4.   Stupidity knows no limits 14:28  |  A mother 22/09/08
  5.   Their blood is on their own heads 14:34  |  Dani 22/09/08
  6.   stupid Israelis 14:35  |  Just me 22/09/08
  7.   It is not terrorism 14:47  |  Chris Linthwaite 22/09/08
  8.   How can legitimate governments know where Al-Qeda is and yet... 14:51  |  Avi 22/09/08
  9.   Stupid readers 15:16  |  Hastaroth 22/09/08
  10.   Don`t be surprized if the Egyptian guides turn out 15:37  |  Mark Anthony 22/09/08
  11.   Hastaroth 15:40  |  Chris Linthwaite 22/09/08
  12.   To 9 15:42  |  Just me 22/09/08
  13.   Linthwaite`s literacy not a strong point? 16:21  |  Joe Sittizen 22/09/08
  14.   Kidnapped Israelis. 16:21  |  Alan 22/09/08
  15.   #1 Phil, you stay in central London and think 16:24  |  Philip 22/09/08
  16.   Amazing that one who claims to be a teacher 16:34  |  MaryRose 22/09/08
  17.   I hope the Israeli will learn from this tragic abduction 17:09  |  Harvey 22/09/08
  18.   Dumb to go to Egypt. Travel at own risk 17:15  |  Laila 22/09/08
  19.   #13 Joe Sittizen 17:40  |  Chris Linthwaite 22/09/08
  20.   Lightweight hooted at the idea of tourists being kidnapped 18:35  |  x-ray 22/09/08
  21.   German Gov. will negotiate, hopefully. 08:55  |  Stephen. 23/09/08
  22.   There really has been little change 14:46  |  Jackie 23/09/08
  23.   The danger is not only in Egypt 21:35  |  Rachel in USA 25/09/08
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