Ten French tourists have been kidnapped in northern Ethiopia by unknown people, a businessman and a tour operator who work in the region said. | Tourists? Visiting the lovely deserts, the wastelands, and the third world poverty? |
Additional: Adis Abeba, 2 March (AKI) - A Somali Islamist group hostile to that country's transitional government appears to be behind the abduction earlier this week of a group of Western tourists in north-eastern Ethiopia, according to Arabic satellite TV network Al-Jazeera. "It is feared the group of Westerners has been taken to Somaliland (northwest Somalia) and that the kidnappers are Somali militiamen, from the province of Ogaden (located within Ethiopia)," said Al-Jazeera's correspondent, speaking from Ethopia.
"It should be remembered that the kidnap occurred shortly afte the arrival of Ugandan troops in Somalia," Al-Jazeera's correspondent added. Somali Islamist militiamen loyal to the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) oppose the deployment of foreign peacekeepers to conflict-wracked Somalia and the continuing presence of Ethopian troops there. Fifteen foreigners, including 11 French nationals, a Briton and an Italian, are missing in Ethiopia and believed to have been kidnapped late on Wednesday in the remote Afar region of Ethopia, according to French diplomatic sources.
Ethiopia's government said it was aware of this week's incident, but could not confirm if it was a kidnapping. No group has claimed responsibility for the abductions. However in 1995, nine Italian tourists were captured by separatist Afar tribesmen in the desert, then released two weeks later. Afar separatists started a low-level rebellion against the government in the 1990s, calling for a separate Afar state on territory straddling Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.