Egypt desert tourists freed after three-day ordeal

by Sanjay Jha | September 23, 2008 at 12:44 am | 77 views | add comment | 0 recommendations

Finally after long drawn negotiation abducted foreign tourist have been released. The Egypt 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.

A group of 19 foreign tourists and Egyptians kidnapped at gunpoint by bandits while on a desert safari in a remote corner of southwestern Egypt have been freed, Egypt's foreign minister said on Monday.

"They have been released, all of them, safe and sound," Ahmed Abul Gheit told reporters in New York.

The captives were released near the Libyan-Sudanese-Egyptian border, he added, three days after masked gunmen attacked their group of four off-road vehicles in one of the most isolated parts of the Sahara desert on Friday.

The tourism ministry of Egypt, which relies heavily on tourism earnings, had stressed that "this is an act of banditry not of terrorism." The Egyptian government had said the group had been taken across the border to Sudan.

Authorities only became aware of the kidnapping when the tour company owner, who was among the missing, used a satellite telephone to call his German wife and tell her of the ransom demand.