Gunmen Abduct Seven Estonian Tourists in Bekaa

Seven Estonian tourists biking in the eastern Bekaa Valley were kidnapped on Wednesday by armed men who bundled them into two vans and drove off, a security official told Agence France Presse.

He said the Estonians had crossed into Lebanon earlier from Syria and were intercepted at about 5:30 pm (1530 GMT) by two white vans and a dark Mercedes 300 with no license plates in the industrial part of Zahle.

"The vehicles headed toward the eastern Bekaa village of Kfarzabad, where there is a post for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC)," the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The army and police are working together to locate the seven missing and bring them back to safety," he added.

He said identification papers for one of the missing was found near the abandoned bicycles.

Later Wednesday, Al-Jadeed television quoted a PFLP-GC official as saying that the Palestinian group had “nothing to do” with the abduction of the seven tourists or with transferring them to Kfarzabad.

The ages, names and sex of those missing were not disclosed.

An official in Zahle had earlier said he believed the group included Ukrainian nationals.

Estonia's honorary consul in Lebanon, Sami Kamouh, confirmed that the seven were all from Estonia and said he was headed to Zahle to meet local officials.

The Estonian foreign ministry said it had no information on the missing tourists.

"We do not know anything more yet. We heard about it from news agencies," ministry spokeswoman Minna-Liina Lind told AFP in the Baltic state's capital Tallinn.

"Over a month ago we gave advice not to visit the country," she said.

"We're now trying to find out who the persons in question are and what we can do."

Kfarzabad is located some 10 kilometers southeast of Zahle and five kilometers from the border with Syria.

The PFLP-GC is a pro-Syrian Palestinian group whose leader, Ahmed Jibril, is based in Damascus.

Abductions have been very rare in Lebanon since the kidnappings of Western hostages during Lebanon's 1975-1990 civil war.

But two Polish tourists were briefly kidnapped last September before being rescued by the army.

The pair were seized by two members of an influential Lebanese clan in the Bekaa town of Baalbek, one of Lebanon's top tourist attractions.

They were rescued when their abductors failed to stop their car at a checkpoint and soldiers opened fire, killing one of the kidnappers.