Egypt Bedouins Kidnap 19 Police

Egyptian Bedouin kidnapped two police officers and 17 conscripts in Sinai on Thursday after a tribesman was killed in a shoot-out with police, security officials said.

The officials said the Bedouin took the policemen at gunpoint after attacking their station near the border with Israel in the increasingly restive peninsula.

They said the kidnappers, who took their captives to a desert location not far from the station, had reached an agreement to release the policemen but have not yet freed them.

The official MENA news agency reported that the gunmen had only besieged the policemen in their station, without abducting them, and later withdrew after negotiations with tribal leaders.

Militants belonging to Bedouin tribes, which complain of discrimination by the central government in Cairo, stepped up attacks on police and a pipeline exporting gas to Israel after president Hosni Mubarak's overthrow last year.

Earlier this month, armed Bedouin briefly abducted two American women and their Egyptian tour guide in southern Sinai, demanding the release of a relative. The tourists were released unharmed.