Britain’s ambassador to Ethiopia made an emotional appeal for information about the five Britons snatched from a remote border area on Monday night as efforts to negotiate their safe release were stepped up.
Foreign Office officials said that progress was being made in the search for two women and three men who were kidnapped at the end of an adventure tour on Thursday, with senior diplomats engaged in round the clock talks with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments.
All five victims — who cannot be named due to a government reporting restriction — are members of staff from the British embassy in Addis Ababa, relatives of diplomats or officials from the Department for International Development.
Speaking on Monday as investigators examined the group’s shrapnel-damaged vehicles, the ambassador, Bob Dewar, said there were local people who were ”willing and able to facilitate their safe return”.
”We stand ready to hear from anyone with information relating to the group’s disappearance,” said Dewar, who knows the missing Britons personally and was speaking publicly for the first time since the kidnapping. ”They are husbands, fathers and sons; wives, mothers and daughters. Their families miss them terribly and want them home.”
The group had been travelling through the remote Afar region, which is popular with European adventure tourists, when they were taken by an armed gang from their compound in Hamedela, a small village just south of the Eritrean border. A dozen local Ethiopians, including the group’s cook and guide, were also kidnapped.
When British investigators reached the site around midday on Monday, they found three partly charred four-wheel-drive vehicles, including a Toyota Landcruiser and Land Rover Discovery belonging to the tour party. The findings appeared to corroborate reports from witnesses in Hamedela on Friday that said the kidnappers had sabotaged the empty vehicles to stop them being used in a chase.
A Foreign Office spokesperson in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said the discovery of the vehicles was ”distressing”.
”It underlines the gravity of the situation,” she added.
In Hamedela on Monday, villagers repeated earlier accounts of how dozens of men in military uniforms had marched the group across the desert towards Eritrea at 2am on Thursday.
A man who claimed to have been released by the kidnappers was presented to journalists by local officials. He said his captors wore Eritrean army uniforms. Like earlier reports that the Britons had been sighted at an Eritrean military camp, the account could not be verified.
As concern grows about the hostages condition — Afar is one of the hottest and most inhospitable regions in the world — British officials said it was still not clear who had taken the group or where they were being held.
SAS liaison officers are on the ground in the region although a Foreign Office source said there were no plans for a rescue attempt.
Dewar said the abduction may have been a case of mistaken identity and the investigating team was still ”exploring every possibility”. More staff may be flown out from London to assist with the investigation, he added.
Although UK officials are in close contact with the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments, hopes of cooperation between the neighbours is thought unlikely. Officials from both countries, who fought a border war just seven years ago and took opposites sides in the recent conflict in Somalia, have accused each over the kidnapping.
The president of the Afar region in Ethiopia has publicly blamed the Eritrean military. While the government in Addis Ababa had been more circumspect, it has done little to dispute the theory that its northern neighbour had planned the mission as a stunt to attract world attention to the disputed border. Eritrea claims that Ethiopia broke international law by refusing to allow an independent boundary commission to demarcate a new border.
Eritrea, which maintains a perpetual state of war readiness due to the continuing border dispute, has described accusations of its involvement in the kidnapping as ”crazy”.
Speaking on BBC radio, Eritrea’s Information Minister, Ali Abdu, said: ”They [Ethiopia] have that kind of habit, to blame Eritrea for whatever things that happen. I would not rule out that this is some kind of staged drama cooked up by the regime in Addis Ababa.”
A third theory is that the kidnappers were Afar separatist rebels who did not realise the value of their hostages. – Guardian Unlimited Â