Estonian Tourists Kidnapped in Lebanon

Masked gunmen in Lebanon kidnapped seven tourists from Estonia as they were bicycling through the Bekaa Valley. Reports said the seven were bundled into two white vans somewhere between Christian and mixed Sunni-Christian towns. Their bikes and backpacks were left at the scene. They had reportedly crossed over earlier from Syria. Last year, two Polish tourists were briefly kidnapped in the Bekaa Valley but were freed after security forces opened fire on their captors at a checkpoint, killing one of them. Groups linked to Hizbullah kidnapped dozens of Western hostages in Beirut in the 1980s during Lebanon’s civil war. But instances of kidnapping have been rare since then.