BERLIN - EUROPEANS held hostage in the desert for 10 days returned home from Egypt on Tuesday, with one of them reportedly calling the abductors 'rather kind criminals' who decided on their own to free them.

Five Germans were greeted by their families and senior officials when they landed at Berlin's Tegel airport from Cairo after being released with 14 other hostages on Monday, the foreign ministry said.

The hostages appeared to be in good health as they left the plane and waved to television cameras.

Also on board were special forces from the German army who had been on standby to assist in the release but who in the end were not needed, Berlin said.

Five Italians also returned home safely early Tuesday to the northern Italian city of Turin. They said they had not been mistreated by their captors but that they were terrified and at one point had lost all hope of being rescued, the ANSA news agency reported.

The Europeans were part of a group of 19 hostages that also included a Romanian and eight Egyptian drivers and tour guides seized by bandits while on safari in a lawless area of Egypt's south-western desert on September 19.

The hostages were first moved across the border to Sudan to the remote mountain region of Jebel Uweinat, a plateau straddling the borders of Egypt, Libya and Sudan, before the bandits took them into Chad, according to Sudanese officials.

Officials in Cairo had said the hostages were then freed unharmed in a pre-dawn raid on Monday by around 30 Egyptian special forces, with Defence Minister Hussein Tantawi claiming 'half of the kidnappers were eliminated' in the operation.

However, German site Spiegel-Online quoted one of the hostages as disputing the Egyptian account, and a German interior ministry official made similar comments.

Egyptian security forces 'did not free us', said the ex-hostage named as Bernd L, 65, calling the claim 'complete nonsense.'

After six of the bandits were killed earlier, the kidnappers decided on their own to free the hostages, 'and that was a big surprise for us because we thought that, now, they were going to kill us all,' said the ex-hostage.

He called the kidnappers 'rather kind criminals' who only wanted to collect a ransom.

German interior minister official August Hanning told n-tv that 'some of the kidnappers had been killed or captured by Sudanese security forces. The kidnappers then freed the hostages themselves.'

German security sources said six kidnappers were killed and two were arrested on Sunday as they attempted to cross a roadblock without the hostages.

The same sources said the kidnappers were members of local tribes.

European officials said earlier there had been little or no violence in freeing the hostages.

'I say with great clarity that there was an operation that led to the release of our hostages. I never spoke of a raid, I never spoke of a violent incursion,' Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told reporters on Tuesday.

'The release of the hostages came about through an international operation that saw our men and our special forces collaborate with the Germans, Sudanese, Egyptians, and I will add, Libyans for a brief period.'

Italy's ANSA news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying that the rescue took place 'without bloodshed because when they were freed by Egyptian security forces the kidnappers had already left.'

According to the Sudanese version of events, reported by the SUNA official news agency, the release came after kidnappers fled after fighting with Sudanese troops the previous day.

Sudanese police sources say that when Sudanese troops chased after the group as it headed towards Egypt, the hostages were abandoned.

One of the Egyptian captives, Abd al-Rahim Rajab Said, also said the bandits had abandoned them, driving off in three cars and leaving them with one vehicle, the London-based Saudi daily Sharq al-Awsat reported.

Left with a little food and water, the hostages then drove east all night until they found Egyptian forces on Monday morning, the paper cited him as saying.

Mr Frattini denied a ransom was paid. The kidnappers had demanded Germany take charge of a six million euro (US$12.9 million) payment to be handed over to the German wife of the tour organiser, who was also a hostage.

German officials refused to comment on this.

Mr Khartoum says the kidnappers belong to a splinter Darfur rebel group, the Sudanese Liberation Army-Unity (SLA-Unity) but an SLA-Unity spokesman denied his group's involvement. -- AFP