19 abducted tourist freed in Egypt

Tuesday, September 30, 2008 at 10:09 am

Eleven European tourists and eight Egyptians abducted in the Egyptian desert have been freed unharmed in an operation in which some of their kidnappers were killed, Egyptian officials said on Monday (September 29).

The freed hostages arrived in Cairo aboard an Egyptian military plane, smiling, some holding bouquets of flowers, to be greeted by Egyptian military and government officials and foreign diplomats.

The 19 were freed in what Egyptian media called a “rescue and recovery operation”, although officials gave scant and contradictory details about how authorities secured the release or how the hostage-takers were killed.

The hostages’ 10-day ordeal had embarrassed Egypt which depends on tourism for 6 percent of its gross domestic product.

Tourism Minister Zoheir Garrana told reporters that no ransom was paid for the release.

Masked gunmen seized the five Germans, five Italians, one Romanian and eight Egyptians on Sept. 19 from a desert safari near Egypt’s borders with Sudan and Libya, then whisked them into Sudan and demanded a multi-million-dollar ransom.

Military helicopters flew the freed hostages to a Cairo hospital for checks.

The five Italian tourists later left Egypt on an Italian military airplane, Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported.

The Egyptian government and political analysts have said the kidnappers did not appear to have political motives. Tour operators say acts of banditry in the area from which the hostages were snatched have been on the rise.

One of the freed Egyptian hostages, Sherif Abdel-Moneim, said the kidnappers had treated them well but abandoned the group at dawn on Monday. He identified his captors as 12 to 17 gunmen who spoke broken Arabic. He said the captors told them that they would face no harm and would be released as soon as they received a ransom from the hostages governments.

Sudan on Sunday said it had killed six hostage-takers and arrested two in a gunbattle near the Egyptian andLibyan border.

Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry, said two men captured on Sunday had told security forces the kidnappers planned to head to Egypt, and that Sudanese forces tried to cut them off.

By that time, the kidnappers had abandoned the hostages.

An Egyptian security source speaking on customary condition of anonymity said Egyptian forces had ambushed the kidnappers, and that 150 people had taken part in the operation.

Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Italian special forces took part in securing the hostages’ release, the Italian news agency Ansa reported.

“It was an operation of excellent professionalism. We have to obviously thank our German friends who worked with us, Egypt as well as Sudan,” Frattini told Italian television.

Egyptian Defence Minister Mohamed Hussein Tantawi said half the kidnappers had been “liquidated”, MENA said without giving details.

Sudan has blamed the kidnapping on a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), a Darfur rebel group, without specifying which faction. Many rebels operate under that name.

The region where the hostages were seized has cave paintings thought to be about 10,000 years old. It is accessible by desert vehicle from the conflict zones of Darfur and eastern Chad.

(Agencies)

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

19 abducted tourist freed in Egypt

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