Chinese workers seized in Egypt 'freed'

Wednesday, 01 February 2012

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A group of 25 Chinese workers kidnapped in the north of Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Tuesday have been freed, Chinese state media say.

Ma Jianchun, commercial affairs counsellor of the Chinese embassy in Cairo, said on Wednesday that the group were ''in good condition''.

He met the workers following their release at 03:00 local time.

They were now at a military hotel in the provincial capital, al-Arish, awaiting further arrangements, he said.

The Egyptian authorities had approached local leaders to negotiate for the workers' release, he added.

The workers were on their way to a military-owned cement factory in the Lehfen area, south of al-Arish, on Tuesday when they were seized by armed Bedouin tribesmen.

The kidnappers had demanded the release of five relatives jailed after the 2004 bomb attack at the Red Sea resort of Taba that killed 31 people.

One of the workers who had been held for 15 hours, a 25-year-old man with the surname Pan, told the Xinhua news agency that the group had communicated with Chinese diplomats via mobile phone text messages.

Dangers for workers

Correspondents say tribesmen have been involved in a series of confrontations with security forces in recent months.

A gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel has also repeatedly been sabotaged, though the big tourist resorts on Sinai's south coast, including Sharm el-Sheikh, have remained largely secure.

This latest case highlights the dangers facing China's workers as Beijing pushes to invest in volatile regions, says the BBC's Martin Patience in Beijing.

On Tuesday, China sent a team of officials to Sudan to assist in the rescue of 29 workers kidnapped over the weekend.

The Chinese nationals had been working on a road project when they were captured by a rebel group in the country's volatile border state of South Kordofan. They have yet to be released.