Fourteen Europeans taken hostage months ago in the Sahara desert have been released by their captors and were expected in the Malian capital yesterday, Seydou Sissouma, adviser to the Malian president, said Monday.
"The hostages were freed shortly after 4:00pm [1600 GMT]. They are still in the region where they were being held [and] are now under Malian responsibility," Sissouma told reporters by telephone.
They were expected yesterday in Bamako, he added.
Iyad Ag Ghali, the Malian mediator who worked to orchestrate their release, told reporters the Europeans were "totally free", while German and Swiss officials also confirmed the news.
The trekkers -- nine Germans, four Swiss and one Dutchman -- were among a group of 32 Europeans taken hostage by Algerian Islamic extremists up to six months ago while roaming the Algerian Sahara without guides.
German and Malian officials had announced earlier Monday that efforts to secure their release had reached a crucial final phase, amid conflicting reports over whether they had already been handed over to Malian mediators.
In Gao, eastern Mali, a Malian aircraft was awaiting take-off orders Monday evening, to pick up the freed hostages in the northeastern region of Tessalit.
A German military plane was expected to fly to Gao yesterday to bring the Europeans back to the Malian capital, officials said.
The Transall plane had been to Gao twice before, on Sunday and Monday, in the hope of picking up the freed hostages but was forced to fly back to the capital each evening to change crew.
Germany's pointman in the crisis, in Bamako since Sunday, separately confirmed that the hostages had been released and were expected yesterday in the Malian capital.
"The president [of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure] has told me that all the hostages have been released and are on their way to Bamako," Juergen Chrobog the German state secretary for foreign affairs, told a press conference at Bamako airport.
"They are expected [yesterday] in the afternoon," he said.
"After that, we will head to Germany," said Chrobog, who flew to Bamako aboard a German army medical plane with a view to repatriating the hostages.
"This is a great day for us, a great day for the German government," Chrobog told the German public television channel ZDF.
However, he refused to comment on the state of health of the 14 tourists, including the nine Germans among them.
The Swiss foreign ministry also confirmed the hostages' release, although it was unable to say when the four Swiss travellers would be returning home.
"We can confirm that the 14 hostages are safe and in the hands of the Malian authorities," foreign ministry spokesman Simon Hubacher said.
Seventeen of the original 32 hostages had been rescued in a raid by Algerian security forces on May 13, while the remaining travellers were held for up to six months, and one 46-year-old German woman, Michaela Spitzer, died in captivity, reportedly from heatstroke.
Most of the hostages are in their 30s or 40s, the youngest being two 19-year-old Swiss nationals and the eldest a German couple, aged 62 and 64.
Their abductors are thought to belong to an Islamic extremist faction called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat (GSPC), which is allegedly linked to the al-Qaeda network.
The figure behind the hostage-taking has been identified as Amari Saifi, an Algerian army renegade known as "Abderrezak the Para", and one of the leaders of the GSPC.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not