11 tourists kidnapped in Egypt
Those abducted were Europeans. No group has claimed responsibility, but ransom negotiations are reportedly underway.
CAIRO — Four masked men kidnapped 11 European tourists, their guides and a security officer today in rugged territory along Egypt's southwest border with Libya and Sudan, state-owned television reported.
Those abducted included five Italians, five Germans, one Romanian, two guides, one driver and a border guard. No group claimed immediate responsibility for the kidnapping, which occurred as the tourists were traveling in four utility vehicles across the arid landscape of the Egypt's New Valley. Their destination, according to a government official, was the Siwa Oasis.
It was unclear whether the captors were Islamic militants or criminal desert gangs looking for ransom. The Sudan-Libya region is known for the kidnapping of Westerners; European governments have reportedly paid ransoms to have their citizens freed in the past.
The governor of the New Valley, Gen. Ahmed Mokhtar, told state-owned TV that the tourists were on a safari trip and arrived in Dakhla oasis on Sept. 16. The tourists were last seen Sunday in Aswan, where, according to media reports, they were to be part of a desert car rally.
"It is not conceivable to have terrorist groups" in the New Valley, he said. "The valley is very secure. It is spacious, and tourists are used to come here and stay for three or four days. We cannot say it's a kidnapping per se. . . . They might have gotten lost and then bumped into a gang that asked them for money, but this cannot be considered kidnapping."
Arab media reported that ransom negotiations were underway.
Egypt's tourism industry, which in 2007 accounted for 11 million visitors and $7.6 billion in revenue, has often been a target of Islamic extremists. Attacks at seaside resorts in the Sinai in 2005 and Sharm El-Shiekh in 2006 killed a total of about 100 people. Those incidents followed the 1997 militant raid that killed 63 people, most of them tourists, in Luxor. That attack nearly decimated the nation's tourism industry, which has since made a dramatic comeback.
Government crackdowns on extremism and stepped-up security in recent years have increased tourism to ancient Nile Valley sites, including Aswan, east of where the kidnappings occurred. Militants, including Ayman Zawahri, Al-Qaeda's second in command, reportedly have been attempting to undermine tourism in an effort to topple the Egyptian government since President Hosni Mubarak came to power after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat.
On Friday, Zawahri, an Egyptian, posted an audio message blaming the Mubarak government for corruption and mismanagement in the deaths of more that 100 people killed Sept. 6 when a section of cliff collapsed on a Cairo slum.
The corruption "won't stop unless we work toward changing it," said Zawahri. "The corruption and the stealing and the foreign presence won't stop unless we face it. I ask God to hasten our victory and rid us of our corrupt governments."
Noha El-Hennawy of The Times' Cairo bureau contributed to this report.
