Security authorities in South Sinai returned a Czech tour guide two hours after she was kidnapped by gunmen on the highway between Nuweiba and Dahab. State-run news agency MENA reported that four masked gunmen in a small truck wielding automatic weapons intercepted a tour bus with 12 Czech tourists on its way back from Taba to Sharm el-Sheikh. The gunmen abducted the tour guide, who is 35 years old. Al-Ahram's online portal reported that a group of armed forces, police and tribal chiefs participated in a search for the tour guide and the kidnappers. According to a police investigation, the tour guide was married to an Egyptian who works with her in the same travel agency. The kidnapping of the Czech tour guide was the fourth foreigner kidnapping in two months in the Sinai, where two Brazilian tourists were kidnapped on Monday and released on the same day. In February, Bedouins demanding the release of jailed tribesmen kidnapped three South Korean tourists in the same area. Two American women and an Egyptian tour guide, and 25 Chinese workers were also kidnapped in two separate incidents before that. In all the recent cases, those kidnapped were released and not harmed. The sparsely populated Sinai holds many of Egypt's most lucrative tourist resorts. It is also home to a mostly poor and disaffected Bedouin population.
