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German forces join manhunt
09/04/2003 00:28 - (SA)
Berlin - Germany has sent a special forces squad to join the hunt for 29 tourists including 15 Germans missing in the vast Algerian Sahara desert, the German news agency DPA reported on Tuesday.
Five German federal police investigators flew to Algiers on Sunday to find the travellers, some of whom have not been heard from since February. DPA quoted German security sources as saying some of the team were members of Germany's crack GSG9 special anti-terrorism force.
The tourists - 15 Germans, eight Austrians, four Swiss, a Dutchman and a Swede - have been missing for weeks in a huge expanse of desert known to be haunted by smugglers, drug runners and a militant group linked to the al-Qaeda network.
Helicopters have been combing the two million square kilometre desert area bordering Libya and Niger.
"We're putting all we've got into this. Police are being helped by local guides who know the desert well, and supported by (Algerian) air force reconnaissance," a security source said in Algiers.
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer spoke to his Algerian counterpart Abdelaziz Belkhadem on Saturday offering German assistance in the investigation, the ministry said here.
Seriously concerned for its nationals, Germany has formed a crisis cell in cooperation with Algeria. But investigating teams had still drawn a blank as of Tuesday.
They are considering the possibilities that the missing groups might either have lost their way or been kidnapped for ransom by Islamic extremists or local smugglers.
Eleven tourists - six Germans, the Dutchman and the four Swiss - forming three distinct groups disappeared on February 21 between Ouargla and Djanet, some 800km and 1 500 respectively south east of the capital of Algiers.
Another group of five Germans and a Swede - four men and two women aged 26 to 53 - have not been heard of since March 17. They were travelling in three four-wheel drive vehicles.
Then last week German police reported that another two men and two women had gone missing on March 8 after leaving on February 22 on a journey of several weeks.
Austrian authorities said in Vienna at the weekend two Austrian diplomats and two military personnel had joined the search for their missing nationals.
The Swiss foreign ministry said it was sending a two-man police team of investigators to Algiers on Wednesday to assist embassy staff with the search for its four missing nationals - two men and two women, aged 20 to 42.
"Switzerland and the other countries concerned have come to the conclusion that the series of disappearances of European travellers in the Algerian desert... was not a coincidence, but appeared to follow a pattern," the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry had no reliable indication of where the four missing could be but said it hoped details of any mobile telephone calls made before they vanished could help trace their route and narrow down the search area.
Although the region the tourists were travelling in has largely been spared the violence that has swept most of Algeria since the authorities cancelled an election in 1992 that a Muslim fundamentalist party was poised to win, an Islamic extremist group is known to operate in the southern desert.
That group is led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar, who some years ago threatened the annual Paris-Dakar car rally, forcing it to change its planned route.
Reports say Belmokhtar has now joined Algeria's largest hardline Islamic insurgency, the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which is linked to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, blamed for the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.
- AFX
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