Multinational special forces raid frees kidnapped tourist

Times:

A group of European tourists who were kidnapped by armed bandits in the remote deserts of southern Egypt have been freed after a raid that left half of their captors dead, Egyptian officials said yesterday.

A force of 30 elite Egyptian troops, accompanied by Italian and German special forces, raided the kidnappers’ camp to release the five Italians, five Germans and one Romanian who were abducted with eight Egyptian guides while on a 4x4 vehicle safari of the desert near the Sudanese border.

The hostages were flown to Cairo for medical examinations and emerged from their military flight smiling to receive garlands of flowers.

Details about how the raid was conducted, and even where it took place, were still hazy last night. A Sudanese official said that the hostages had been abandoned before the rescue mission was begun, and that Sudan’s own forces had fought the kidnap gang near the Egyptian and Libyan border the day before. That statement was partially borne out by one of the guides, who said that his captors had been a group of about 17 gunmen who spoke broken Arabic.

Sherif Abdel-Moneim said that the gang had treated the group well but abandoned them at dawn yesterday. “Moments later security forces came and rescued us,” he said. The gunmen had told them that they meant the group no harm, he said. “They told us: ‘We won’t do anything to you. Once we get the ransom from your governments, you will walk free’. ”

An Egyptian official said that half of the kidnappers had been killed in a gun battle. “Just before dawn two helicopters flew in special forces from the elite Lightning Brigade who freed the hostages. There was a gunfight during which half the around 35 kidnappers were killed and the rest escaped.”

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While it is unlikely to be confused with Israel's raid on Entebbe, it did have a happy outcome. The ransom attempt had clearly already failed. It will be interesting to see what the ideology, if any was behind the attacks. It was supposedly mounted by a small Sudanese rebel group of which there are many.