Nigerian extremist group says hostages killed
An extremist Islamic group says it has executed seven foreign hostages, including one Briton, after kidnapping them from a construction company last month.
The Ansaru group, suspected to be an offshoot of Boko Haram, released a statement on an Islamist website saying it had killed the hostages following attempts by Britain and Nigeria to free them.
Ansaru kidnapped the construction workers from a compound belonging to Lebanese construction company Setraco on February 7. The hostages, taken from the site in the Bauchi state in the north of Nigeria, included a Briton, an Italian, a Greek and four Lebanese workers.
British government blamed
The statement, issued in Arabic and English, included screen shots of a video purporting to show the dead hostages, the SITE Monitoring Service reported.
One shot showed a man with gun standing above several figures lying on the ground. The image was not clear enough to see if they were dead or much detail about them.
“(We) announced the capture of seven Christian foreigners and warned that should there be any attempt by force to rescue them will render their lives in danger,” the statement said. “The Nigeria and British government operation lead to the death of all the seven Christian foreigners.”
A spokesman for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: “We are aware of reports of the death of a British national in Nigeria and are urgently investigating. We urge the media not to speculate at this extremely sensitive time.”
Doubts raised
However, sources from Nigeria reported doubt as to whether any harm had been done to the hostages.
“As far as I’m concerned, and to the best of my knowledge, nothing like that has happened,” Bauchi Police Commissioner Mohammed Ladan told Reuters when asked about the online statement.
An intelligence official in the north also said he doubted the report, although he said some suspects linked to the kidnapping had been arrested last week.
Mohammed Abdullah, a spokesman for Setraco, also said he had heard nothing about any harm done to the hostages.
The group’s full name is Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, which roughly translates as “vanguards for the protection of Muslims in Black Africa”