Islamist group kills 7 foreigners kidnapped in Bauchi

• Written by  Moses Alao with Agency Report
• Sunday, 10 March 2013 00:00 
• Nigerian Tribune

AN Islamist group, which declared itself independent from Boko Haram, Ansaru, has said on Saturday that it had killed seven foreign hostages it seized on February 7 from a construction company in Jama’are town of Bauchi State, SITE Monitoring Service said.

According to the online news source, Reuters, the group issued a statement in Arabic and English on an affiliate of the Sinam al-Islam network accompanied by screen shots of a video purporting to show the dead hostages, SITE said. One screen shot showed a man with a gun standing above several prone figures lying on the ground.

Ansaru, which had kidnapped other foreigners in the past, had blasted into the compound housing the foreigners who were workers with SETRACO construction company, using explosives and ended up killing a security man while it also abducted a Briton, an Italian, a Greek and four Lebanese workers, the largest number of foreigners kidnapped in the mostly Muslim North since an insurgency by Islamist militants intensified two years ago.

The group had, after the kidnapping in February, announced that its action was “based on the transgression and atrocities done to the religion of Allah by the European countries in many places such as Afghanistan and Mali.

Following the kidnapping, the British and Nigerian governments, it was learnt, were working on how to free the hostages; a development which the group said made it decide to kill the hostages.

The group whose full name, Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan, roughly translates as “vanguards for the protection of Muslims in Black Africa,” in addition to the dreaded Boko Haram sect, had continued to hold the Northern part of the country to ransom since 2009.