German tourists missing
2004-11-20 20:51
Algiers - The Algerian tourism ministry on Saturday denied a report broadcast earlier by the national radio that five German tourists missing for several days in the Sahara desert had been found.
The Germans were travelling without a guide in the same region in Algeria where 32 Europeans were kidnapped by Islamic militants last year.
The radio quoted tourism minister Mohamed Seghir Kara as saying they had been found in Tadrart in the far south of the country.
But the ministry issued a "categorial denial" that Seghir Kara had said any such thing.
It accused the radio of plucking rumours from the air and falsely attributing them to the minister.
A security source told AFP that the five had not been heard from since Wednesday when they "gave their guide the slip" in the Djanet region, 1 700km southeast of the capital, Algiers.
The daily El Khabar said on Saturday that the tourists had disappeared after parting company with their guide in "mysterious circumstances" in Djanet, where they were visiting historic sites and oases. The foreign ministry in Berlin had said they were looking into the report.
Journalists had compared their disappearance with the abduction in 2003 of 32 European tourists by the extremist Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
The tourists were finally released in two groups after several months, during which one woman tourist died of sunstroke in the desert.
The German foreign ministry warns citizens not to travel in the far south of Algeria, saying on its website that the danger of kidnapping still exists.