Suspected Al-Qaeda-linked militants in Niger who kidnapped two young Frenchmen apparently executed the hostages during an attempted rescue mission by Niger and French troops
A French husband-to-be and his childhood friend
were seized by gunmen with assault rifles at a restaurant in Niamey on Friday and found dead after the military’s failed rescue operation in the desert on Saturday
everything seems to indicate that the two French hostages were executed,” said Thierry Burkhard
a spokesman for the armed forces in the French defence ministry
Defence Minister Alain Juppe was heading to Niamey for talks today with Niger officials and French nationals there
One of the dead hostages was a former aid worker who had been due to marry a Nigerien woman next week
who had just arrived in Niamey for the ceremony
The hostages’ local member of Parliament named them as Antoine de Leocour
two friends who had grown up together on the same street in the small northern French town of Linselles
told France’s Europe 1 radio station that he arrived in Niamey on Friday night to join him
“We came to see him married and now we’re going to see him buried,” he said
Mr Burkhard said a French surveillance aircraft backing up Niger armed forces chased the kidnappers and caught up with them in the desert
A commander in the Niger forces was wounded in a first clash with the kidnappers
The aircraft then pursued the captors further and a second firefight took place in which “several” of the kidnappers were killed and two French ground troops slightly injured
A statement from defence chief Juppe on Saturday said: “At the end of the operation
the lifeless bodies of the two hostages were discovered.”
French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Saturday condemned the killings as “a barbarous and cowardly act.”
A military source in Mali said the kidnapping may have been carried out on behalf of militants linked to the Al-Qaeda network in the Sahel desert region spanning Niger
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