French special forces 'join hunt for kidnapped family' in Cameroon

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/20/french-special-forces-cameroon

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French special forces have arrived in northern Cameroon to help find a French family kidnapped and moved to Nigeria, a local governor said. Augustine Fonka Awa declined to say how many French military personnel arrived from their regional base in Chad's capital, N'Djamena, about 40 miles from where the tourists, three adults and four children, were taken.

French defence minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said yesterday that evidence pointed to Nigerian Islamists Boko Haram, but there did not appear to be a direct link to France's intervention in Mali.

"We believe it's the Boko Haram group that carried out the kidnapping, but we don't know for sure. Unfortunately, terror breeds terror," he said.

Asked to confirm or deny whether France had sent special forces, a defence ministry spokesman in Paris said only that their presence was an unfounded rumour. "French gendarmes visited the site of the kidnapping yesterday in co-ordination with Cameroonian police to assess the situation and were protected by French military," he said.

Joseph Dion Ngute, a junior minister at Cameroon's foreign ministry, told French television the kidnappers put the hostages on motorcycles and stole another car before heading to Nigeria.

It was the first case of foreigners being seized in the mostly Muslim north of Cameroon. But the region – like others in west and north Africa with typically porous borders – is considered within the operational sphere of Boko Haram and fellow Nigerian Islamist militants Ansaru.

The father of the family, which included children aged between 5 and 12, worked for utility firm GDF Suez. France has about 6,000 nationals in Cameroon.