The Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan also known as Ansaru has claimed killing seven foreign hostages it seized last month in Bauchi State. The expatriates were employees of SETRACO Construction Company. Ansaru in a statement issued yesterday, declared that the abducted workers were killed during an attempt by Nigerian and British forces to rescue them.
Reueters, which made the Ansaru statement public, said the federal authorities claimed they had no information on any such killing, and doubted the veracity of the statement.
In a statement released on an Islamist website, the group said it had killed the hostages in response to attempts by Britain and Nigeria to free them.
The report linked to SITE Monitoring Service further said the al Qaeda-aligned group invaded the compound of SETRACO, a Lebanese construction company on February 7 and abducted a Briton, an Italian, a Greek and four Lebanese workers.
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 north since the insurgency in the region intensified two years ago.
“As far as I’m concerned, and to the best of my knowledge, nothing like that has happened,” Bauchi State police commissioner, Mohammed Ladan, told Reuters yesterday.
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.
Mohammed Abdullah, a spokesman for SETRACO, also said he had heard nothing about any harm done to the hostages.
Ansaru, believed to be an offshoot of the larger Boko Haram group, said it had decided to kill the hostages because of attempts by Britain and Nigeria to rescue them.
“(We) announced the capture of seven Christian foreigners and warned that should there be any attempt by force to rescue them will render their lives in danger,” the statement said.
“The Nigeria and British government operation lead to the death of all the seven Christian foreigners,” it said.
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