Cairo - Nineteen people kidnapped by an unknown group of masked men in the Egyptian Western Desert have now been transferred to Libya, the Arab satellite broadcaster al-Arabiya reported on hursday, days after they were taken from Egypt to Sudan.

The kidnapped group consists of eleven tourists - five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian - plus eight Egyptian travel company staff.

The travellers had been on a desert safari of Egypt's Gilf Kebir region in the Western Desert when they were snatched by a gang of masked men on September 19.

Cairo - Nineteen people kidnapped by an unknown group of masked men on September 19 in the Egyptian Western Desert have now been transferred to Libya, the Arab satellite broadcaster al-Arabiya reported on Thursday.

A spokesman for the Sudanese Foreign Ministry told the channel that the group, which includes five Germans, five Italians and one Romanian tourist, had been brought across the Libyan border.

The group were previously thought to be at a location 25 kilometres inside Sudan after having been snatched near the Gilf Kebir region in the Egyptian desert.

London, September 25: Archaeologists have discovered an ancient statue of Ramses II, the famous Egyptian pharaoh, five feet under the sands of a Nile delta town in Egypt.

According to a report in the Telegraph, Egyptian archaeologists located the pink, granite monument at a site in Tell Basta, once the capital of the ancient state 50 miles north of Cairo.

The great king’s nose had been broken and his beard was missing, according to Zahi Hawass, the head of the country’s supreme council of antiquities.

Cairo - Conflicting reports on the identity of the group that kidnapped 11 European tourists and eight Egyptians in Egypt's Western Desert on Friday continued to circulate Wednesday.

An Egyptian government spokesman said the kidnappers were from Djibouti, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported.

But other Egyptian officials were being quoted as saying one of the kidnappers came from Chad, while his three accomplices came from Sudan.

The Al-Jazeera news channel, meanwhile, quoted unnamed Egyptian officials as having said the group was from Chad. An official at the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said the kidnappers were all Egyptians.

Cairo - German officials are negotiating with the kidnappers of 11 tourists and eight Egyptians who went missing on Friday in Egypt's southern desert during a safari trip, sources in the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism said on Tuesday.

Negotiations for the release of the eleven Europeans, including five Germans, five Italians, a Romanian, and the eight Egyptian guides, are ongoing, said the sources, who declined to give their names.

The German Foreign Ministry set up a crisis team immediately after reports of abduction surfaced on Monday afternoon, German officials said.

Cairo - Another rockslide occurred on Tuesday in the Doweiqa shanty town on the outskirts of Cairo, the scene of an accident where hundreds of people were killed on September 6 when rocks dislodged