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Algeria hostages: Deal reached
28/07/2003 11:18 - (SA)
Algiers - Algerian security forces have reached a deal for the release of 15 European hostages held for months by Islamic extremists in the Sahara desert, a press report said on Sunday.
The El Watan daily, quoting Algerian security sources, said the 10 Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman will travel to neighbouring Mali under the deal reached with the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC).
"It is true that the risks were great given the difficulty and the complexity of the situation on the ground. To avoid loss of human life, we were obliged to allow the terrorists to leave in exchange for the release of the 15 hostages safe and sound," the report quoted a security source as saying.
The 15 Europeans went missing between mid-February and mid-March while trekking in small groups without guides in the remote southern Algerian desert.
The GSPC, the largest active rebel group in Algeria's 11-year-old civil war with alleged links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, has not claimed their capture.
Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika said in early June that he was prepared to leave an unspecified "way out" for the group's captors "to save the lives of human beings, to save the hostages".
Another group of hostages - 10 Austrians, six Germans and a Swede - who were also kidnapped in Algeria were freed in a raid by Algerian special forces on May 13.
The Algerian security authorities refused to comment on the El Watan report, which comes as a German team was expected in northern Mali to try to track down the missing adventure-seekers, while authorities in Bamako questioned reports they were already in Mali.
On Thursday, a senior Swiss foreign ministry official also said the missing Europeans were most likely to be in Mali, although Bern was still seeking harder evidence of their whereabouts.
The sources did not say "how or by what means" the 15 would reach Mali from the mountainous southern Algerian region of Tamelrik where they were held, near Illizi, which is about 1 200km from the Malian border.
Temperatures in the shade range from 45 to 50° in the region at this time of year.
- AFX
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