Ships in the Edge

Egypt still trying to free kidnapped tourists (AFP)

CAIRO (AFP) - Egypt is still working for the release of 11 kidnapped European tourists, the official MENA news agency said Tuesday, despite an announcement they had been freed along with eight Egyptians.

"Egyptian efforts are ongoing to release the abducted tourists," MENA quoted an unnamed official as saying after Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said in New York that all 19 had been freed "safe and sound".

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said that the words "attributed to Foreign Minister Abul Gheit … were inexact."

"Information from Egypt indicates that the situation is unchanged," MENA quoted him as saying about the fate of the European tourists and their Egyptian guides, drivers and a guard, snatched at gunpoint in the desert on Friday.

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Five Italians and five Germans were among those kidnapped, but the Italian and German embassies in Cairo both said they were trying to confirm reports of the release. A Romanian is also being held.

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

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The tourism ministry of Egypt — a nation that relies heavily on tourism earnings — 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 tourism ministry as saying earlier Monday.

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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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The tourism ministry said those snatched included five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian, as well as two Egyptian guides, four drivers, a guard and the tour company owner.

MENA said the tour company operator had called his wife late on Monday to tell her the group was "safe and sound."

Garana, the tourism minister, earlier said Egypt had not been negotiating with the kidnappers and there was no word on their identity or "their group."

German authorities were in touch with them, Garana said, adding that they had asked for a ransom of between eight and 15 million dollars, MENA said.

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 , a rugged and largely uninhabited region on the border with Sudan.

A spokesman for Sudan's Northern State, which borders Egypt and Libya to the north and west and the war-torn Darfur region to the south, told AFP that "until now we have no information about this" abduction.

Rebels from Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, which lies less than 300 kilometres (190 miles) south of the Egypt-Sudan border, were quick to deny involvement.

"We have nothing to do with any kidnap," said Ahmed Hussein Adam, a Lond

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