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(回答先: アルジェリアでドイツ人行方不明の旅行者一部解放。アルジャジーラから 投稿者 はまち 日時 2003 年 5 月 15 日 17:48:48)
Hostages seized in the Sahara are freed after fatal shoot-out
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
15 May 2003
Seventeen tourists taken hostage in the Sahara were flown home to Germany and Austria last night after being freed in a bloody gunbattle between Algerian commandos and a terror group linked to al-Qa'ida.
The six Germans, a Swede and 10 Austrians disappeared on a trekking holiday in mid-March. Ten other Germans, four Swiss and a Dutchman who also vanished between mid-February and mid-March are still missing, believed held by the same group.
"The tourists were freed by force, not by negotiation, which means the outlook for the rest isn't good," one diplomat was quoted as saying. "The forces will have had to act quickly."
All 32 captives started out as desert adventurers who delight in travelling without guides in one of the world's most inhospitable, yet unspoilt, regions. "The Sahara is a magical place where you can free yourself from rules and find answers about your own existence," is how one veteran German trekker described the thrill last week.
Whether the lucky 17 who arrived home last night still feel the same about the desert is doubtful. The past two months have been spent as captives in caves in a remote mountainous region of the southern Sahara, where the daytime temperature reaches 50C. On Tuesday, their ordeal finally ended when the Algerian army commandos stormed the hide-out.
The Algerian authorities said at least nine of the hostage-takers had been killed in the battle, which raged for several hours near an area called Amguid before the hostages could be freed. The commandos exchanged fire with some 10 hostage-takers armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles. The national armed forces said: "After a brief assault against the terrorists ... the group of 17 detained tourists ... were freed, healthy and unharmed."
The battle and the freeing of the first batch of hostages followed a two-month intensive search for the tourists by the Algerian army, which deployed 12,000 troops in the region, backed by German, Swiss and Austrian anti-terrorist police.
The tourists were found in an almost inaccessible mountainous region, bisected by numerous gorges, with the help of reconnaissance aircraft equipped with heat-seeking equipment. The freed hostages spent Tuesday night in an Algerian hospital and were then taken to their embassies in Algiers yesterday. They were said to be "remarkably well" considering their ordeal.
The six Germans and one Swede flew home by military plane accompanied by the German deputy foreign minister, Juergen Chrobog, as well as a doctor and a psychologist. A plane carrying the 10 Austrians flew to Salzburg. The hostages smiled and flashed V-for-victory signs at photographers as they boarded.
Nikolaus Bleckmann, whose 60-year-old father, Ingo, was among the Austrian hostages, said they had spoken by phone from Algiers. "He said he was fine and he would tell me everything when he gets home," Mr Bleckmann said.
The fate of the other 15 tourists is still unknown. Algerian reports said they were still being held in the Talmerik mountains, 900 miles south-east of Algiers "They are still in a very precarious situation," Otto Schily, the German Interior Minister, said. "But there is hope hey will be free soon."
The German media named the freed German hostages as Ulrich Hanel, Axel Mantey, Melanie Simon, Andreas Kiehlechner, Michaela Joubert and Harald Ickler. The six had gone missing near the Algerian town of Tamanrasset on 17 March. The Algerian army said the tourists had been kidnapped by members of a militant Islamic fundamentalist group known as the Salafist Group for Prayer and Combat, which is known to be linked to the al-Qa'ida network.
The army's disclosure increased speculation that the predominantly German-speaking tourists had been kidnapped in an attempt to barter for the release of four Algerian militants who were jailed in Frankfurt for planning to bomb a Christmas market in Strasbourg in 2000.
But no group publicly claimed responsibility for the kidnappings, although there were rumours that the hostage-takers had demanded a ransom of several thousand dollars.
The kidnappings began in early February when four German-speaking Swiss trekkers travelling near Algeria's border with Libya disappeared without trace. Eleven other tourists riding all-terrain motorcycles went missing on 21 February.
Four other parties of mainly German trekkers vanished shortly afterwards and, in March, 10 Austrians were declared missing after failing to show up for a booked ferry from Tunis. Earlier this week, the German government disclosed that another German had gone missing in the region, bringing the total to 32.
The only traces left by the vanished tourists were the cover of a Nissan all-terrain vehicle belonging to one of the Germans that was dumped in the desert and empty beer cans with a message declaring, "We are still alive" that was discovered next to a desert track.
During the search, Tuareg desert nomads claimed to have discovered a Western all-terrain vehicle outside a network of caves in the Algerian mountains and said they suspected the tourists were being held inside. But the Algerian authorities imposed a news blackout on their disappearance. They were backed by the German, Swiss and Austrian governments, which dismissed all the reports as speculation.
Relatives of the missing were so exasperated by the apparent lack of progress that they sent pieces of camping equipment and toothbrushes to police so the bodies of their family members might be identified if found.
Several of the tourists were seasoned Sahara trekkers who had already made trips to the region. Most were either on, or making for, southern Algeria's ominously named "grave route", which is flanked by prehistoric burial sites.
Sahara trekking is particularly popular among Germans. Eight thousand of the 20,000 Western tourists who visited Algeria last year came from Germany. Until this year, the German Sahara Club remained unaware that the region harboured particular dangers. "Before the kidnapping, the danger of being mugged or murdered in Sahara was not considered to be much greater than in France or Germany," Werner Noether, a spokesman for the club, admitted last month.
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