Twenty-five Chinese workers kidnapped in Egypt on Monday have been released by their Bedouin captors.
Xinhua news agency quoted the Chinese Embassy in Cairo as saying the workers are unharmed.
The technicians and engineers were on their way to work at a cement factory in the Lehfen area when gunmen stopped their bus.
Their captors were reportedly seeking the release of relatives detained by the Egyptian authorities several years ago for suspected involvement in an attack in 2004 on a tourist resort at the Red Sea resort of Taba in which 31 people were killed.
The BBC says the kidnapping highlights the dangers faced by Chinese workers as Beijing pushes to invest in volatile regions of the world.
