Gang robs New Yorkers outside S.Africa game park

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- A honeymoon couple from New York were robbed of their car and belongings by an armed gang as they left South Africa's Kruger National Park during the weekend, the domestic news agency SAPA reported on Monday.

Lesley and Scott Newman were driving on a dirt road outside the country's largest game park when they were overtaken by a truck and forced off the road.

Six armed men held up the couple, aged 28 and 29, and took their car, luggage, money, cameras and passports.

"We only have the clothes on our backs left," Scott Newman told SAPA.

The couple cut their honeymoon short and were to return to New York on Monday evening.

South Africa's violent crime rate, one of the highest in the world, has dented its image as a holiday destination. The country had 55.3 murders per 100,000 people in 1999, compared with six per 100,000 in 1998 in the United States.

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