CAIRO: Suspected militants in Egypt's Sinai abducted six security personnel as they headed to Cairo for holidays early yesterday, security officials said, the first such kidnapping of security forces in the increasingly lawless peninsula.

The officials said masked gunmen ambushed two taxis at gunpoint outside the city of Al-Arish, the capital of North Sinai governorate, fleeing with five policemen and one border guard captive, none of whom were in uniform. The officials earlier said seven men had been kidnapped but revised the figure after they confirmed one of the policemen was already on holidays.

Egyptian President Muhammad Mursi yesterday held crisis talks with his defense and interior ministers over the kidnapping of policemen and soldiers in Sinai, as negotiations were underway to secure their release.

Egyptian security services were in talks with the kidnappers via mediators for the release of three Egyptian policemen and four soldiers held at gunpoint overnight in the Sinai peninsula, state media reported.

"There are huge efforts underway" for their release, said Samih Ahmed Bashadi, head of security in the province of North Sinai.

"The security services are in contact with the respectable elders of North Sinai over the matter," Bashadi told state television in a call-in.

Earlier Mursi had summoned Defense Minister Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim over the kidnapping.

According to the official MENA news agency, the kidnappers are demanding the release of a group of prisoners held at a police station in the North Sinai town of Al-Arish.

The conscripts were returning from a leave of absence when their minibus was stopped at gunpoint in Al-Wadi Al-Akhdar, which lies east of Al-Arish, they said.

The three captured policemen are from the Central Security Forces while the four other men belong to the armed forces. Four of the policemen work in the Rafah border terminal leading to the Gaza Strip, and one was in a riot police unit deployed in the peninsula. The border guard was a member of the military.

Local Bedouin leaders had been called in to mediate between authorities and the kidnappers.

Witnesses, meanwhile told MENA that authorities are restricting the movement of troops in North Sinai until the crisis is resolved.

They said several vehicles carrying soldiers heading to military camps in the North Sinai town of Rafah were unable to proceed.

Security officials said the kidnapping came after the mother of an imprisoned militant said she found her son to be tortured in detention, causing his eye sight to fail. The imprisoned militant is held on charges of attacking a police station in the early days after Mubarak's ouster.

The officials said authorities were sending the family to visit their son in prison again and provide him with necessary medical attention in a bid to defuse anger over his treatment, and secure the safety of the captive security personnel. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the new instructions with the media.