Cairo  - Fifteen tourists were kidnapped in Upper Egypt on Monday, with Egyptian authorities now in touch with kidnappers to try to negotiate their release, latest media reports said.

The latest reports said that the 15 included five Germans, five Italians, four Egyptians and one Romanian national.

The kidnapped were on a safari trip when they were seized by four masked men.

In both Berlin and Rome, the respective foreign ministries confirmed that their nationals were among the kidnap victims.

Cairo  - Up to 15 foreign tourists, including a number of Italians and possibly also Israelis, have been kidnapped in Egypt, the television broadcaster Al-Arabiya reported Monday.

Amman - King Abdullah II of Jordan is to travel to Cairo on Tuesday for talks with Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak on the latest developments in the Middle East, officials said Monday.

Gaza - Egypt opened its border with Gaza Strip on Saturday to allow the passage of Palestinians who want to perform minor pilgrimages to Mecca (Omra), stranded people and patients, Palestinian security sources said.

The Hamas-controlled interior ministry in Gaza said the Rafah border crossing would remain partially open until late Sunday. Palestinians stranded at the Egyptian side would also be able to cross to Gaza.

Except for occasional exceptions for humanitarian reasons, Egypt has kept the Rafah crossing closed since Hamas took over control of the Gaza Strip by force last year.

Cairo- The death toll from a rockslide in Cairo earlier this
month has risen to 101 after rescuers pulled five more bodies from the
rubble, local media reported on Friday.

Rescuers have started to break a rock exceeding 1,000 tonnes to
free 17 victims of one house crushed under it, Egyptian daily al-Masri
al-Youm reported.

The rockslide, in which several massive boulders separated from a
cliff face on September 6 and crashed down on houses in a shanty town
on the edge of the Egyptian capital, has prompted criticism of the
Egyptian government for being too slow to respond.

At least two months will be needed to retrieve all the trapped
bodies from under the debris, the paper quoted an Egyptian official as
saying.

Cairo -