Five Chadian, Senegalese, Franco-Ivorian and Cameroonian employees of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), kidnapped a month ago in the Far North of Cameroon by armed men, have been released in neighboring Nigeria, announced Thursday March 31 the NGO to AFP.
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They had been kidnapped on the night of February 24 to 25 in Fotokol, near the Nigerian border, a region where the jihadist groups Boko Haram and Islamic State in West Africa (Iswap) regularly attack civilians and soldiers.
The ex-hostages were "
taken to a safe place
", specifies the NGO without revealing the circumstances of their release.
“
We are happy to find our colleagues safe and sound
,” reacted Stephen Cornish, the director general of MSF, in an email to AFP.
The ex-hostages, a Franco-Ivorian, a Senegalese and a Chadian as well as two Cameroonian security guards, had been abducted by armed men who entered the MSF home.
“
There is nothing to link this act to the attacks of Boko Haram.
We don't know if it was a simple theft gone wrong.
A safe has been opened
,” a Cameroonian local government official, who requested anonymity, told AFP at the time of the kidnapping.
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The Cameroonian authorities indiscriminately call the group of the same name from Nigeria Boko Haram or its dissident branch of Iswap, which has pledged allegiance to IS.
Fotokol is near Lake Chad, a vast expanse of water and swamps that stretches its shores into four countries: Chad, Niger, Cameroon, and Nigeria.
Boko Haram and Iswap have set up their hideouts in some of the countless islets that dot the lake.