A FRENCH family of seven, including four children, kidnapped in northern Cameroon and taken to Nigeria by suspected Boko Haram militants last February have been released, a senior Cameroon official said on Friday.
“They are all alive and well,’’ Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, secretary-general of Cameroon’s presidency, said in a statement carried by state radio.
He said the family had been handed over to Cameroon authorities late on Thursday.
The family, which was on holiday, was abducted in February by men on motorcycles, armed with Kalashnikovs in Dabanga about 10 km from the Nigerian border near the Waza national park.
Gunmen claiming to be from Nigerian Islamist group Boko Haram later released videos of the family, threatening to kill them if authorities in Nigeria and Cameroon did not release Muslim militants held there.
The parents of the family, which included two boys and two girls as well as another relative, work for French utility firm GDF Suez.