OCCUPIED JERUSALEM (Agencies)
Israel on Tuesday told its nationals vacationing in Egypt's Sinai desert to leave the peninsula immediately, saying it had concrete information of an imminent plan by militants to kidnap an Israeli citizen.
The warning by Israel's security agencies came after a rumor that an Israeli had been kidnapped in Sinai. The Israeli emergency service Zaka later said the rumor was untrue.
"According to concrete intelligence we anticipate an immediate terror activity to kidnap an Israeli in Sinai," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
Israel's Channel 2 television said some 20,000 Israelis vacationed in Sinai during the week-long Jewish Passover holiday, which started March 29. It said only a few hundred remained there.
Israel's anti-terrorism unit said it had "concrete information" about an "imminent risk of a terrorist abduction operation."
Israel already issued a general warning to its citizens in February about the dangers of travel over the next few months to the Red Sea resort area which is a major draw.
The anti-terrorism unit cited "threats from (Lebanese Shiite militant group) Hezbollah and Iran."
Despite a number of major bombing attacks in the Sinai in recent years, the sun-drenched peninsula remains a popular tourist destination for Israelis.
In April 2006, 20 people were killed in the resort of Dahab; in July 2005, 70 people were killed in the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh; and in October 2004, 34 people were killed in Taba, hard by the Israeli border.
In April last year, Egyptian authorities said they had unveiled a plot by sympathizers of Hezbollah, which fought a devastating war with Israel in 2006, to kidnap or kill Israelis in the Sinai.
Palestinian fighters in Gaza are holding Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom they captured in a cross-border raid in June 2006. Egypt and Germany are trying to mediate a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Hamas Islamist group that runs Gaza.
Those talks have faltered over the number of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas wants Israel to release in return for Shalit. Israel holds some 11,000 Palestinians in its jails.
Source: Alarabiya.net | Middle East
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