Five Germans and five Italians who were part of a 19-member tourist group kidnapped in Egypt and taken by their abductors on a dash through the Sahara Desert returned to their home countries yesterday.
The Italian tourists arrived at Turin’s Caselle airport, and the Germans and a Romanian woman who lives in southwestern Germany touched down several hours later at Berlin’s Tegel airport.
The tourists and their eight Egyptian drivers were rescued by troops in helicopters from a barren wilderness just inside Chad, Egyptian officials have said, but details of the operation were not clear.
The Italians said they had been robbed at gunpoint, but were never physically harmed throughout their 10-day ordeal.
“They attacked us with guns ... they took everything. They made us kneel on the ground at gunpoint and then took us away,” Italian tourist Walter Barotto told SKY TG24 at the airport.
In Germany, the tourists waved to cameras as they exited the plane, but made no comments to the media. In a statement, the Foreign Ministry said the group thanked officials for the intense efforts to secure their release.
German special forces had been on hand in Egypt to provide backup to the Egyptians if needed, but did not take part in the rescue, the Foreign Ministry said.
Some Egyptian officials spoke of a gunbattle with the kidnappers that killed several of the gunmen, but there was no official confirmation.
The brother of one of the freed Egyptians in the group said the kidnappers abandoned their captives in the desert and fled shortly before the rescue operation.
“The first days we, I mean us women especially, kept our heads down, with a veil — this was our own choice, it seemed the most appropriate behavior — we didn’t look for any contact,” said one of the Italians, Giovanna Quaglia. “But I must say we were never subjected to physical violence.”
The German tourists were identified only as a 56-year-old man and his 60-year-old wife, a 69-year-old woman and two men aged 37 and 65.
‘HYANGDO’: A South Korean lawmaker said there was no credible evidence to support rumors that Kim Jong-un has a son with a disability or who is studying abroad South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor. The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader. The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae]
In the week before his fatal shooting, right-wing US political activist Charlie Kirk cheered the boom of conservative young men in South Korea and warned about a “globalist menace” in Tokyo on his first speaking tour of Asia. Kirk, 31, who helped amplify US President Donald Trump’s agenda to young voters with often inflammatory rhetoric focused on issues such as gender and immigration, was shot in the neck on Wednesday at a speaking event at a Utah university. In Seoul on Friday last week, he spoke about how he “brought Trump to victory,” while addressing Build Up Korea 2025, a conservative conference
DEADLOCK: Putin has vowed to continue fighting unless Ukraine cedes more land, while talks have been paused with no immediate results expected, the Kremlin said Russia on Friday said that peace talks with Kyiv were on “pause” as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin still wanted to capture the whole of Ukraine. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that he was running out of patience with Putin, and the NATO alliance said it would bolster its eastern front after Russian drones were shot down in Polish airspace this week. The latest blow to faltering diplomacy came as Russia’s army staged major military drills with its key ally Belarus. Despite Trump forcing the warring sides to hold direct talks and hosting Putin in Alaska, there
North Korea has executed people for watching or distributing foreign television shows, including popular South Korean dramas, as part of an intensifying crackdown on personal freedoms, a UN human rights report said on Friday. Surveillance has grown more pervasive since 2014 with the help of new technologies, while punishments have become harsher — including the introduction of the death penalty for offences such as sharing foreign TV dramas, the report said. The curbs make North Korea the most restrictive country in the world, said the 14-page UN report, which was based on interviews with more than 300 witnesses and victims who had
RSS