Sahara kidnappers move hostages to Libya: Sudan

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Kidnappers holding 11 European tourists and eight Egyptians moved from Sudan into Libya with their hostages Thursday, a Sudanese spokesman said.

The kidnappers seized the tourists -- five Germans, five Italians and a Romanian -- last week while they were on a desert safari through the far southwest of Egypt. They have been inside Sudan since at least Tuesday.

"The group moved toward the Libyan border and then crossed the border, and they are now 13 to 15 km (eight to 10 miles) inside Libya," Ali Youssef Ahmed, head of protocol in the Sudanese Foreign Ministry, told Reuters.

The Sudanese government said Tuesday it had them surrounded at their encampment near Jebel Oweinat, a mountain near where the borders of Egypt, Sudan and Libya meet.

"The Libyan authorities have been informed. They are now following the progress of the group," Ahmed said.

Egyptian officials have said the kidnappers were demanding a large ransom. One security source said they wanted 6 million euros ($8.8 million) to set the hostages free.

The Sudanese government has indications the kidnappers may be from one of the many rebel groups active in the Darfur region of western Sudan, Ahmed said.

The indications include the language they speak and their route when they entered Sudan from Egypt. Most Darfuri rebels do not have Arabic as their first language.

Ahmed Hussein Adam, London-based spokesman for the powerful rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) dismissed the suggestion as "propaganda from the government of Sudan." He said JEM had not played any part and said he could not believe any other faction in the far western region was involved.

"Nobody would do this kind of thing. It is not the style of the struggle in Darfur," he said.

CONFLICTING INFORMATION

There has been contradictory information about the identity of the kidnappers. Egyptian officials have said the kidnappers could be Sudanese or Chadian, while Sudanese officials at first said they believed the hostage takers were Egyptian.

The remote region, which contains cave paintings thought to be about 10,000 years old, is accessible by desert vehicle from the conflict zones of Darfur and eastern Chad.

Tour operators say they have seen an increase in banditry in the area over the past year.

The Egyptian and German governments have spoken to the kidnappers by satellite telephone and negotiators are optimistic about reaching a "good outcome" soon, an Egyptian government source said Thursday.

Asked how the hostages were doing, the Sudanese spokesman said: "Information from today is that nobody has been hurt. There have been no casualties."

Romania's foreign ministry has said the kidnapped Romanian was a 33-year-old woman who lives in Germany.

An Egyptian official said earlier in the week the kidnappers had threatened to kill the hostages if authorities tried to find them by plane, but state media later quoted Egypt's tourism minister as denying any such threat.

Analysts say the kidnappers do not appear to have political or ideological motives, unlike the militant Islamists who attacked tourist targets in the Nile Valley and the Sinai peninsula in the 1990s and the middle of the current decade.

But the incident is an embarrassment to the Egyptian government, which counts preserving law and order in a troubled region as one of its major achievements. Tourism accounts for over 6 percent of Egypt's gross domestic product.

(Reporting by Andrew Heavens; Writing by Jonathan Wright; Editing by Caroline Drees)