Islamist militants from neighbouring Nigeria abducted a French family of seven, including four children, in northern Cameroon yesterday, French President Francois Hollande said.
The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country’s north.
“They (French family) have been taken by a terrorist group that we know and that is in Nigeria,” Hollande told reporters during a visit to Greece. Armed men on motorcycles intercepted the family in their car at 7am GMT and forced them to drive to the nearby Nigerian border, an aide to the governor of the province told Reuters, and the four-wheel drive vehicle was later found abandoned.
Islamist radicals in northern Nigeria now pose the biggest threat to stability in Africa’s top oil-producing state.
Western governments are concerned that Nigeria’s Boko Haram Islamists may link up with groups elsewhere in a region with poorly secured borders, especially al Qaeda’s North African wing AQIM given the conflict in nearby Mali.
The seven French nationals were abducted in Dabanga about 10 km from the Nigerian border near the Waza...
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