Dramatic ending to an ordeal in desert

Ex-hostages recall capture, release

Egyptian drivers Ibrahim Abel-Rehim Ali (left) and Meloud Abbas Abdel-Wahab (third from left) were hugged by relatives yesterday in southern Cairo after their release by kidnappers. (Ahmed Yassin/Associated Press)

CAIRO - The end of a 10-day ordeal for a tour group came far out in the desolate Sahara, when kidnappers lined up some of the captives and cocked their weapons. "At that moment, we thought we were dead," said one Egyptian guide.

Instead, the gunmen shouted: "Go, go, go!"

The 11 European tourists and eight Egyptian guides and drivers crammed into a single four-wheel-drive vehicle, five of them perched on the roof, and made a harrowing drive to safety across more than 200 miles of desert on a moonless night, the freed hostages said yesterday. Their captors apparently fled.

"We made it, and it was a true miracle," guide Hassan Abdel-Hakim said at a Cairo hospital. "No one rescued us. No Germans, no Sudanese, and no Egyptians. Only God."

His and other accounts contradicted reports by Egyptian security officials describing a dramatic rescue involving gunbattles between the hostage-takers and Egyptian-Sudanese troops backed by German and Italian commandos. There was no Egyptian official comment on the new accounts.

Another guide, Sherif Farouq Mohammed, said that when the freed hostages reached the border Monday morning - exhausted but unharmed - they were met by Egyptian border guards, guns drawn, apparently believing they were the kidnappers.

"They pointed their weapons at us and we were waving our hands trying to tell them that we are the hostages," he said.

The trek to safety came after 10 days of being dragged across the barren wilderness of northwestern Sudan by the kidnappers, even weathering a sandstorm, until their captors abandoned the group near the Sudan-Chad border.

Five Germans, five Italians, a Romanian, and their Egyptian guides were seized Sept. 19 while on a safari to the Gilf al-Kebir, a desert plateau in southwestern Egypt famed for prehistoric cave paintings. Heavily armed gunmen roared up in SUVs, ordered them to kneel and looted their belongings - including mobile phones, a satellite phone, laptop computers, and cash.

It was "just like you see in the movies," Michele Barrera, 71, said from his home near Turin, Italy, hours after he and the other Europeans were flown to their homelands.

The kidnappers, believed to be Sudanese or Chadian tribesmen, took the captives and their vehicles across the nearby border into Sudan. Egyptian and Sudanese troops scoured the empty landscape while the gunmen moved the group from place to place.

The only person physically mistreated was the Egyptian police officer escorting the group. "They kicked him in the face when they learned that he was a security man," Mohammed said.