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splinter group of the dreaded Boko Haram group, Ansaru, yesterday said it had
killed seven foreign hostages seized last month from a construction firm’s
compound in northern Nigeria, where Islamist insurgents have killed hundreds
over the past two years.
But Nigerian authorities said they had no information on any
such killing, and doubted the veracity of the statement. In a statement
released on an Islamist website, the Ansaru group said it had killed the
hostages in response to attempts by Britain and Nigeria to free them, SITE
Monitoring Service reported. Ansaru is one of several Islamist groups that have
become the main security threat in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer.
The al Qaeda-aligned group blasted into the compound of Setraco,
a Lebanese construction company, on February 7, abducting a Briton, an Italian,
a Greek and four Lebanese workers.
According to Reuters, the statement issued in Arabic and English
on an affiliate of the Sinam al- Islam network was accompanied by screen shots
of a video purporting to show the dead hostages, SITE said.
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.
The hostage-taking, in the remote town of Jama’are in Bauchi
state, was the biggest number of foreigners seized in the mostly Muslim north
since the Islamist insurgency there intensified two years ago.
“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.
Lebanese officials said they were checking the reports. Italy’s
foreign ministry also said it was checking. Britain did not officially comment.
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