Mediation fails to end standoff
2004-02-29 21:51
Assiut, Egypt - Mediators failed on Sunday to end a standoff in its fifth day in a Nile river town where armed, wanted men have taken about 80 civilians hostage in their attempt to elude security forces in armored vehicles and speedboats storming the town.
Police and a clan chief who leads the bandits said the negotiators - lawmakers and journalists - were unable to secure a deal. Police want all the armed men and all those wanted for their criminal records to surrender.
The clan chief, Izzat Mohammed Hamid, said he refused to give himself up but offered the surrender of four of his clansmen, including one of his brothers.
"They refused. They want us all and this will never happen," he told The Associated Press by telephone.
Both police and Hamid said shooting resumed on both sides after the negotiations collapsed.
Some hostages were feared dead, but no official casualty figures have been released and the town has been sealed off, with armored personnel carriers posted at the main road.
A parliament member, speaking on condition of anonymity, said legislators representing southern Egypt began negotiations with the outlaws late on Saturday. The lawmaker said the leader of the armed men - believed to number about 50 - was conditioning surrender on a guarantee of his life.
It wasn't immediately clear what other conditions were being discussed. Earlier attempts at negotiation failed and gunbattles late on Thursday and early on Friday wounded four police officers.
Security forces besieging Nakhilah, about 320km south of Cairo, the capital, have been trying since Wednesday to complete an operation the Interior Ministry said was intended to arrest drug traffickers and other wanted criminals. About 3 000 officers and 100 armoured vehicles were deployed around Nakhilah, long considered a centre of illicit trade in arms and drugs.
Some of the wanted men are sought in connection with vendetta killings that have claimed at least three lives since September.
On Saturday, security forces fired tear gas and moved in armoured vehicles, aiming rocket-propelled grenade fire at mud buildings on the outskirts of town, where the gunfire was coming from. Eight structures collapsed in the firing, and police feared some hostages may have been killed.
Police said the suspects set fire to 13 houses before escaping into other parts of town.
Hamid accused security forces of targeting houses with people in them and warned that the village's food supply was critically low.
A ministry of interior statement on Saturday said police had arrested 15 bandits and seized some weapons and large quantities of drugs in the raid.
Hamid told The Associated Press on Friday that his men were holding 500 civilians hostage, but police put the figure at 80.
- AP