Cairo - Egyptian Bedouins seized two female
American tourists and their Egyptian tour guide on Friday on the road to
the historic monastery of St Catherine's in Sinai, security officials
said.
A group of masked gunmen held up the tourists' bus in Wadi
al-Soal in south Sinai, snatching the three before taking off, the
officials said.
Bedouin sources told AFP the kidnappers were
demanding the release of relatives held in Egyptian jails, without
providing further details.
State television said a military airplane had been deployed over south Sinai, as a search operation quickly got underway.
The
incident comes just days after Bedouins in north Sinai briefly seized
25 Chinese workers employed by a military owned cement factory, to
demand the release of Islamist relatives detained over bombings in the
peninsula between 2004 and 2006.
-AFP
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