Austrian tourists missing in Sahara

Austrian tourists missing in Sahara

Smugglers and drug traffickers are known to haunt the region

Eight Austrian tourists have gone missing in the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, bringing the number of foreign travellers who have disappeared in the region recently to 29.

The eight "adventure tourists" were reported missing by relatives on Friday after they failed to board a ferry in the Tunisian capital, Tunis, as scheduled.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry has sent two diplomats and two officers from a special police unit to the region to help the search for those missing.

Austria has also issued a travel warning for the country, urging all its citizens to leave the country or contact its embassy in the country.

Kidnap fears

Officials in Algeria are still searching for several groups of tourists - 16 Germans (in several different groups), four Swiss and one Dutch national - who have all gone missing in the desert wilderness since mid-February.

The tourists were travelling through the Sahara Desert by car or motorbike, a spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry said earlier this week.

Most of them disappeared between the towns of Ouargla and the towns of Illizi and Djanet in the far south of Algeria.

Helicopters using heat-seeking devices - capable of locating bodies and machines buried under sand - have been enlisted to find those who have disappeared, so far without success.

Germany has also sent five federal police agents to Algeria to help official search efforts, the Associated Press news agency reported.

Smugglers and drug traffickers are known to haunt the area around southern Algeria, near the borders with Niger and Libya, and there are fears the tourists may have been kidnapped.

Several of these criminal groups have been linked to Islamic militants fighting the Algerian Government.

However authorities have said that the travellers could also have experienced vehicle problems because of sand and extreme temperatures.

Tourists have been found dead in the Sahara desert in the past, usually stranded after their fuel has run out.