€10,000 reward for information on CABS assailants

The Committee Against Bird Slaughter (CABS) today announced that it would pay a reward of up to €10,000 for information leading to the arrest of the men who attacked a CABS patrol vehicle with rocks near il-Qaws on Saturday morning.

"It was only a matter of luck that no one was seriously hurt" CABS president Heinz Schwarze said in a statement.

According to CABS, five masked men took part in the assault.

"A sum of €2,000 will be paid out for information leading to the arrest and conviction of each of the five criminals" Mr Schwarze said.

"It is not usually our policy to resort to such means. But in view of the escalating violence against our members we have decided that this step is now necessary".

CABS also announced that pictures taken by them that identify poachers in the countryside would be shortly published on their website at www.komitee.de/en .

" The police have not yet been able to identify all the poachers filmed by us in the last two weeks" comments CABS spokesperson Axel Hirschfeld. Anyone recognising the men in the photos should contact the A.L.E. or - anonymously if necessary - the CABS office in Germany.

CABS ATTACKED IN CYPRUS AS WELL

CABS also reported that one of its teams of international bird conservationists in Cyprus was attacked on Saturday.

They had just dismantled 30 limesticks and freed protected migrant species when they were savagely attacked by four Cypriot men with stones, fists and boots on common land near Paralimni. The CABS members, a mixed Italian, German and British team, had spent the day locating and destroying illegal traps and cleaning the sticky lime from the helpless song birds before releasing them.

An American journalist from the respected magazine New Yorker who was accompanying the team described the scene as "a war zone".