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 yesterday.
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.
It was the first time foreign tourists had been kidnapped in Egypt.
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 yesterday 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.
Garana said the kidnappers were demanding a ransom of between US$8 million and US$15 million, Egypt’s official MENA news agency reported late on Monday that.
A security source said Egyptian authorities were also in talks with the kidnappers.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said at the UN 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.
He said the group was being held in the Karkuk Talh, just across the border in Sudan, having started their safari near Gilf el-Kabir.
The tourism ministry stressed that “this is an act of banditry not of terrorism.”
“Four masked gunmen attacked four vehicles affiliated to a tourist company. They kidnapped the tourists and led them to the Sudanese lands,” MENA quoted the ministry as saying.
Authorities only became aware of the kidnapping 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.
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