EGYPT / SUDAN: Sudanese authorities have located a group of kidnappers and the 19 hostages they seized in Egypt last week but have no plans for a rescue attempt that could endanger them, a Sudanese official said yesterday.
Masked kidnappers snatched the hostages - five Italians, five Germans, a Romanian and eight Egyptians - from a desert safari near Egypt's southern border with Sudan and Libya on Friday and are thought to have whisked them out of Egypt.
An Egyptian cabinet spokesman said that negotiations to free the hostages were continuing and reports that they had been released were premature. Foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit had said on Monday that the hostages had been freed and were safe and sound.
The kidnappers have threatened to kill the hostages if authorities try to find them by aircraft, an Egyptian official with strong ties to security agencies said, speaking on condition of anonymity. But Egypt's tourism minister denied there was any such threat, the state news agency MENA reported.
Sudanese foreign ministry official Ali Youssef Ahmed said the hostages and their captors were about 25km (15 miles) inside Sudanese territory near Jebel Oweinat, a mountain 1,900 metres (6,200 feet) high near where Egypt, Sudan and Libya meet.
"An Egyptian team is conducting negotiations with this group on releasing the hostages, while Sudanese forces surround the site," Mr Ahmed, who is head of protocol in the ministry, told the state news agency SUNA.
"We are not going to have an operation that harms the hostages," said Mutrif Siddig, Sudanese undersecretary of foreign affairs. "We are intensifying our operation in the area. Our directive is to monitor and guarantee the safety of the hostages. Sudan is shouldering its responsibility."
The kidnapping of foreign tourists was the first of its kind in Egypt, and posed a new challenge to a country that depends on foreign tourism for 6 per cent of the national economy.
Egypt's state-owned al-Ahram newspaper 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.
- (Reuters)