TWO FRENCH citizens were killed in Niger at the weekend after being kidnapped by suspected Islamist terrorists in the capital, Niamey.
The bodies of the two men, both in their 20s, were found after a shoot-out involving Nigerien and French forces as the kidnappers fled towards the Malian border.
The French government said no group had claimed responsibility for the abductions, but al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim) was widely suspected of involvement.
The group has kidnapped 20 westerners in the Sahel region of north-central Africa over the past two years and is holding five French citizens since seizing them in northern Niger last September.
If Aqim was responsible, the act would represent a significant widening of its area of operation. Previous kidnappings in Niger have occurred in the country’s northern desert, hundreds of kilometres from Niamey, and the capital had been considered relatively safe for westerners.
The French foreign ministry responded to the killings at the weekend by warning its citizens against travel to the Sahel. “In view of the terrorism threat in the region, no area can be considered safe any longer,” it said in a statement. The Sahel, a vast belt of desert south of the Sahara, includes parts of Senegal, Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Chad.
Antoine de Leocour, an aid worker in Niger, and his friend Vincent Delory, both aged 25, were kidnapped from a restaurant in Niamey at gunpoint on Friday evening. Mr Delory had recently arrived in the country to attend Mr de Leocour’s wedding.
Thierry Burkhard, a spokesman for the French army, said Niger’s national guard and a French surveillance plane pursued the kidnappers into the desert. Reports suggest that, some 100km from Niamey, the troops mounted an attack which resulted in one Niger commander being injured.
A second attack followed shortly afterwards, when soldiers and French commandos intervened to prevent the kidnappers crossing the Malian border. Two French soldiers were injured and “several” militants killed or injured, the French military said.
The hostages’ bodies were then found, and Col Burkhard said it was “very probable” they were executed by the terrorists.
President Nicolas Sarkozy said he learned with “profound sadness” of the Frenchmen’s deaths, which he condemned as a “barbaric and cowardly act”.
Foreign minister Alain Juppé is due to travel to Niger today for talks with officials and representatives of the community of several thousand French residents.
The terrorist threat in the Sahel has become one of France’s biggest foreign policy preoccupations in the past year: Mr Sarkozy has spoken of the country being “at war” in the region. Last July, another French hostage, Michel Germaneau, was killed by Aqim after Franco-Mauritanian commandos launched an unsuccessful raid to liberate him in Mali.
Aqim emerged in 2007 from an Algerian group called the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat. Its membership is thought to be between 200 and 250.