By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: February 19, 2013

LAGOS, Nigeria — Seven French tourists, including four children, were kidnapped in northern Cameroon on Tuesday, the second large-scale hostage-taking in the region in four days. The French president and foreign minister pointed the finger at Islamist terrorist groups operating across the border in northeast Nigeria, possibly including the deadly Boko Haram organization.

The family was seized near a national park in the far north.

The kidnappings appeared to be part of the widening fallout from France’s military intervention against Islamist militants in northern Mali. Though French officials did not explicitly link the two in their statements on Tuesday, they invoked them together and vowed to continue the Mali campaign. All told, about 15 French citizens are now being held captive in West Africa.

The seven kidnapped on Tuesday are all members of the same family who live in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. They camped on Monday night in Waza National Park in the far north of Cameroon and set out early Tuesday for the animal reserve of Kalamaloue, where they were going to view elephants, a Cameroon park official said. A security official said the group was seized near Dabanga, a frontier town, and was then taken across the Nigerian border into a region of semidesert and scrub where Boko Haram has its base.

Over the past four years, the region has faced dozens of assaults by the terrorist group, including bombings, ambushes and other attacks on civilians and security forces. Harsh counterterrorism tactics by the Nigerian security forces have only marginally damped the campaign.

The French energy company GDF Suez said Tuesday that one of the seven captives was a company employee based in Yaoundé who was involved in developing a natural gas liquefaction plant planned for southern Cameroon. A company spokeswoman confirmed that the man and his six relatives were vacationing in the far north when they were seized.

President François Hollande of France, speaking to reporters in Athens, said the kidnappers were “a terrorist group that we are familiar with, and that is in Nigeria,” adding that “the likeliest possibility is that they were taken to Nigeria.”

Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, was more explicit, saying in Paris that the location of the attack, near the border and the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, where Boko Harum was founded, was “why we think it might be this sect.”

Boko Haram’s campaign of violence against the Nigerian security forces — by some estimates claiming 800 lives last year — had not previously included kidnappings. But they have increasingly become a regular tactic of a breakaway group, Ansaru, which has claimed responsibility for several recent abductions in the region, including seven foreigners taken from a Lebanese construction company’s compound in northern Nigeria on Saturday night. The attackers used dynamite on a protective wall, killed a security guard and took over the compound, taking away an Italian, a Greek, an Englishman, three Lebanese and a Filipino. The group issued a statement linking the kidnapping to the French intervention in Mali.

As of Tuesday night, no group had claimed responsibility for the latest kidnapping, which came on a day of fierce engagements between French and Islamist forces in the desolate desert terrain of northeastern Mali. A French paratrooper was killed in the fighting, the second French fatality in what Mr. Hollande called “the final phase of the operation in Mali.”

Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities had little to say on Tuesday about the abduction of the tourists. Cameroon’s information minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, declined to confirm to reporters that the family had been seized and did not respond to later phone calls seeking comment.

In Nigeria, where the ability of terrorist groups to operate relatively unhindered has become an embarrassment to the authorities, an official in Maiduguri dismissed reports that the French captives had been taken across the border into the country.

Gomachi:
By ADAM NOSSITER
Published: February 19, 2013

LAGOS, Nigeria — Seven French tourists, including four children, were kidnapped in northern Cameroon on Tuesday, the second large-scale hostage-taking in the region in four days. The French president and foreign minister pointed the finger at Islamist terrorist groups operating across the border in northeast Nigeria, possibly including the deadly Boko Haram organization.

The family was seized near a national park in the far north.

The kidnappings appeared to be part of the widening fallout from France’s military intervention against Islamist militants in northern Mali. Though French officials did not explicitly link the two in their statements on Tuesday, they invoked them together and vowed to continue the Mali campaign. All told, about 15 French citizens are now being held captive in West Africa.

The seven kidnapped on Tuesday are all members of the same family who live in Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital. They camped on Monday night in Waza National Park in the far north of Cameroon and set out early Tuesday for the animal reserve of Kalamaloue, where they were going to view elephants, a Cameroon park official said. A security official said the group was seized near Dabanga, a frontier town, and was then taken across the Nigerian border into a region of semidesert and scrub where Boko Haram has its base.

Over the past four years, the region has faced dozens of assaults by the terrorist group, including bombings, ambushes and other attacks on civilians and security forces. Harsh counterterrorism tactics by the Nigerian security forces have only marginally damped the campaign.

The French energy company GDF Suez said Tuesday that one of the seven captives was a company employee based in Yaoundé who was involved in developing a natural gas liquefaction plant planned for southern Cameroon. A company spokeswoman confirmed that the man and his six relatives were vacationing in the far north when they were seized.

President François Hollande of France, speaking to reporters in Athens, said the kidnappers were “a terrorist group that we are familiar with, and that is in Nigeria,” adding that “the likeliest possibility is that they were taken to Nigeria.”

Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister, was more explicit, saying in Paris that the location of the attack, near the border and the Nigerian city of Maiduguri, where Boko Harum was founded, was “why we think it might be this sect.”

Boko Haram’s campaign of violence against the Nigerian security forces — by some estimates claiming 800 lives last year — had not previously included kidnappings. But they have increasingly become a regular tactic of a breakaway group, Ansaru, which has claimed responsibility for several recent abductions in the region, including seven foreigners taken from a Lebanese construction company’s compound in northern Nigeria on Saturday night. The attackers used dynamite on a protective wall, killed a security guard and took over the compound, taking away an Italian, a Greek, an Englishman, three Lebanese and a Filipino. The group issued a statement linking the kidnapping to the French intervention in Mali.

As of Tuesday night, no group had claimed responsibility for the latest kidnapping, which came on a day of fierce engagements between French and Islamist forces in the desolate desert terrain of northeastern Mali. A French paratrooper was killed in the fighting, the second French fatality in what Mr. Hollande called “the final phase of the operation in Mali.”

Cameroonian and Nigerian authorities had little to say on Tuesday about the abduction of the tourists. Cameroon’s information minister, Issa Tchiroma Bakary, declined to confirm to reporters that the family had been seized and did not respond to later phone calls seeking comment.

In Nigeria, where the ability of terrorist groups to operate relatively unhindered has become an embarrassment to the authorities, an official in Maiduguri dismissed reports that the French captives had been taken across the border into the country.

Yup, it wont be long now. I hope you'all living in Nigeria are preparing for those drones. I'll give it a few more months.

Who actually saw them crossing into Nigeria

By the time this boko haram/jamb saga is over the north will be back in the stone age.