Gunmen claiming to be from Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram threatened on Monday to kill a kidnapped French family of seven if authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon do not release Muslim militants held there.
French ministers said they believed the three adults and four children seized in Cameroon’s far north near the Nigerian border on Tuesday last week were being held by Boko Haram, which has killed hundreds in an attempt to establish an Islamist state in Nigeria.
The first sign of the family since they were captured came in a video posted on YouTube in which they appeared surrounded by three gunmen wearing turbans and dressed in camouflage.
Photo: AFP
“We have been taken by Jama’atu Ahlis Sunna Lidda’awati wal-Jihad,” one of the male hostages said in the video.
“They want the liberation of their brothers in Cameroon and their women imprisoned in Nigeria,” the man added, reading notes in French as he sat on a red rug on the floor.
Beside him sat a woman dressed in a black veiled dress, another man and four young children.
The hostage-taking highlighted the risk to French citizens in Africa after Paris sent thousands of troops into Mali last month to oust Islamists operating in the country’s vast desert north.
“A video of the French family kidnapped in northern Cameroon last Tuesday has just been posted by Boko Haram,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “These images are terribly shocking and show a cruelty without limits.”
The kidnapping brought to 15 the number of French citizens being held in the region.
France has carried out hundreds of air strikes and dispatched 4,000 troops to Mali to defeat the mixture of al-Qaeda-linked groups that hijacked a separatist Tuareg rebellion and occupied the northern two-thirds of the country.
After swift victories in Mali’s main towns, French troops risk becoming bogged down in a bloody conflict against an enemy that is using guerrilla tactics and suicide bombs, and has pledged reprisal attacks across the region.
“The president of France has launched a war on Islam and we are fighting it everywhere,” one of the apparent kidnappers said, speaking in Arabic and identifying himself as a member of Boko Haram.
“Implement our demands. If you leave out even one, we will kill these people,” he added, with a pistol at his feet.
The governor of Cameroon’s Far North Region, Augustine Fonka Awa, said he was not aware of any Boko Haram members being held in the country.
The Nigerian militant group has previously posted videos in Hausa, a language spoken in northern Nigeria. Yet the video, whose date of recording was not clear, was only in Arabic.
The black and white flag that hung behind the hostages in the released video is more associated with groups tied to al-Qaeda than Boko Haram.
A spokesman for Boko Haram had denied any connection with the kidnapping at the weekend, saying it remained committed to a ceasefire.
However, security experts in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil exporter, say Boko Haram is made up of multiple cells, without a defined command structure.
“It is therefore not unsurprising that you have one group claiming a ceasefire, just as another splinter cell is raising its profile with this kidnapping,” a Nigeria-based Western security source said, asking not to be named.
The militant group is known to have had some links to al Qaeda factions in North Africa and Mali, where fighters are believed to have spent some time training.
Although limited for now, the conflict in Mali appears to have deepened connections between mainly Arab Islamist militants in North Africa and black African movements south of the Sahara.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the