Hostage drama ends with desert drive to safety

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
The end of a 10-day hostage drama for a European tour group came in the middle of nowhere in the Sahara, when the kidnappers lined up some of their captives and cocked their weapons ominously. "At that moment, we thought we were dead," said Egyptian guide Hassan Abdel-Hakim. Instead, the gunmen shouted: "Go, go, go!" The 11 Europeans and their eight Egyptian guides and drivers crammed into a single 4X4 vehicle, some sitting on the roof, and made a harrowing drive to safety across more than 380 kilometers of desert on a pitch-black moonless night, the freed hostages said Tuesday. The gunmen apparently fled. "We made it, and it was a true miracle," Abdel-Hakim told The Associated Press at a Cairo hospital on Tuesday. "No one rescued us. No Germans, no Sudanese and no Egyptians. Only God."