Israel warns citizens of Sinai kidnapping threat

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel on Tuesday told its nationals vacationing in Egypt's Sinai desert to leave the peninsula immediately, saying it had concrete information of an imminent plan by militants to kidnap an Israeli citizen.

The warning by Israel's security agencies came after a rumour that an Israeli had been kidnapped in Sinai. The Israeli emergency service Zaka later said the rumour was untrue.

"According to concrete intelligence we anticipate an immediate terror activity to kidnap an Israeli in Sinai," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.

Israel's Channel 2 television said some 20,000 Israelis vacationed in Sinai during the week-long Jewish Passover holiday, which started March 29. It said only a few hundred remained there.

Israel fears that Palestinian militants intend to kidnap Israelis in the Sinai and transfer them to the Gaza Strip through tunnels dug under the enclave's border with Egypt.

Despite a number of major bombing attacks in the Sinai in recent years, the sun-drenched peninsula remains a popular tourist destination for Israelis.

Gaza militants hold Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom they captured in a cross-border raid in June 2006. Egypt and Germany are trying to mediate a prisoner swap deal between Israel and the Hamas Islamist group that runs Gaza.

Those talks have faltered over the number of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas wants Israel to release in return for Shalit. Israel holds some 11,000 Palestinians in its jails.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr, Editing by Michael Roddy)