A death threat against six French hostages seized from an oil vessel off Cameroon has been lifted, a commander of a militia group involved in the raid told French radio on Saturday.
”We are not going to kill them any longer,” a man identified as ”Commander Dari” told Europe 1 radio, explaining that his group had nothing against the French government and nothing to gain from killing French hostages.
Colonel Ebi Dari, a Niger Delta Defence and Security Council (NDDSC) commander, had said on Friday he and an allied group had carried out the attack in which 10 hostages, six of them French, were taken.
Dari had said the NDDSC and the Bakassi Freedom Fighters, militia groups from Cameroon’s oil-rich Bakassi peninsula, would kill the hostages if the Cameroonian government did not meet their demands.
He did not detail those demands, but said Cameroon’s government should contact the groups, which began a string of attacks on Cameroonian military forces in the run-up to Nigeria’s handover of Bakassi to Cameroon on August 14 after a decades-long border dispute.
Cameroon has not indicated whether it is prepared to negotiate with the kidnappers, but said on Saturday it would work to free the hostages.
”All means and measures have been put in place to preserve the lives of the hostages, identify the kidnappers and assure the security of all people moving into and out of the national territory,” the government said on state radio, without giving further details of its rescue plan.
Gunmen in speedboats on Friday seized six French citizens, two Cameroonians, one Senegalese and one Tunisian from the ”Bourbon Sagitta,” an oil vessel contracted by French oil company Total.
Dari confirmed the numbers after earlier saying seven of those kidnapped were French. — Reuters