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 today.
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 case posed a new challenge to the security-conscious government in a country which depends on foreign tourism for 6 per cent of the national economy.
Islamic militants hit the country's tourist industry in the 1990s and again in the mid-2000s with bomb and gun attacks that killed hundreds of people.
The official said Egyptian authorities had traced to Sudan calls from the kidnappers to the tour operator's German wife.
But a Sudanese foreign ministry official said it was unlikely the hostages were in Sudan because of border security and the lack of hiding places in the remote area.
The Egyptian state-owned daily newspaper al-Ahram today 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 a ransom.
Security sources said yesterday the kidnappers were demanding €6 million euros to free the hostages, and said there was no sign militant Islamists were involved.
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 also launched a series of attacks on tourists in the Nile Valley in the 1990s.
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.
Reuters