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Sudanese troops watch kidnap group: UPDATE

Sudan said on Wednesday 19 hostages seized in the Sahara last week are alive and well, as Sudanese and Egyptian security forces watch from a distance, avoiding a showdown that might result in loss of life
According to Reuters News Agency, said Foreign Ministry official Ali Youssef Ahmed "We have fresh reports today that they (the hostages) are all well. Today we are 100 percent sure that they are okay,"


Four or five masked men kidnapped the adventure tourists -- five Germans, five Italians, a Romanian and eight Egyptians -- last week while they were on a desert safari from the Egyptian oasis of Dakhla to the Gilf al-Kabir plateau in the desert.
The kidnappers are holding them just inside Sudanese territory near Jebel Oweinat, which at 1,900 metres (6,200 feet) is the highest peak for hundreds of kilometres (miles).
The area around the mountain contains caves with prehistoric rock paintings dating back some 10,000 years. Travellers can also visit the nearby Cave of Swimmers, made famous in the 1996 film The English Patient.
"The kidnappers are being watched from a distance. We know their movements," added Ahmed, who is head of protocol.
"There is contact between the German government and the kidnappers. There is full agreement between all those who are concerned that there will be no military operation in the meantime to safeguard the safety of the hostages," he added.
"Security forces from Sudan and Egypt are watching them closely. It is very important not to make these terrorists react to any fear of being attacked," he added.
The Sudanese official said the identity of the kidnappers was still unclear. Various officials have speculated over the past two days that they are Egyptian, Sudanese or Chadian.
Through phone calls between the owner of the adventure tour company and his German-born wife in Cairo, the kidnappers have asked for a large ransom. Egyptian security sources have said they demanded 6 million euros ($8.8 million).
Ahmed said Egyptian and Sudanese forces were coordinating their operations closely but declined to say whether Sudan had given the Egyptians permission to cross the border.
The kidnapping is the first of its kind from Egyptian territory but has features in common with other kidnappings at the western end of the vast north African desert.
Analysts say the kidnappers do not appear to have political or ideological motives, unlike the militant Islamists who attacked tourist targets in the Nile Valley and the Sinai peninsula in the 1990s and the middle of the current decade.
But the incident is an embarrassment to the Egyptian government, which counts preserving law and order in a troubled region as one of its major achievements.