A Canadian and an Italian kidnapped in 2018 in Burkina Faso by armed men were found alive on Friday in northeast Mali. They are in good health and are under the protection of the forces of the UN (United Nations Organization).
Edith Blais and Luca Tacchetto, both in their 30s, escaped their captors in the vicinity of Kidal and were taken to the peacekeepers of the UN mission in Mali (Minusma).
A photo taken on Friday evening at the Minusma camp in Kidal and distributed by the UN mission shows them both smiling, wearing a white Minusma t-shirt with the inscription "My voice, rights, my future ".
They fled
"We have good news: yesterday, in the afternoon, our elements from Kidal informed me that they could find two hostages, a Canadian and an Italian," said the head of the Minusma, Mahamat Saleh. Annadive.
The two ex-hostages actually managed to escape. Dressed in Tuareg, they stopped a vehicle and asked the driver to drive them to the first post of peacekeepers, said a security source on condition of anonymity. No information was provided on the circumstances under which they were able to flee, nor on their captors. The peacekeepers drove them to Kidal camp. "We checked them medically, they are doing really well, we let them rest," said Mahamat Saleh Annadif.
They were going to Togo
Edith Blais, from Sherbrooke, 160 km east of Montreal, and her companion, Lucas Tacchetto, from Venice (northern Italy), disappeared in mid-December 2018 while crossing this country of West Africa plagued by a surge of jihadist attacks. The couple were driving by car to Ouagadougou from Bobo-Dioulasso, more than 360 km west of the Burkinabé capital, when their track was lost. They were planning to go to Togo for a humanitarian project with the Zion'Gaïa organization.
The Burkinabé government spokesman said in April 2019 that they were kidnapped and presumably taken out of the country, but that they were not in danger. Burkina Faso, confronted since 2015 with increasingly frequent and deadly jihadist attacks, experienced a succession of hostage-taking. A Romanian and an Australian have still not been found.
