US special forces rescued two foreign hostages from Somali pirates in a Tuesday raid. American Jessica Buchanan and Danish national Poul Thisted were working for a Danish demining group when they were kidnapped in October.
Colombia’s FARC rebels have killed at least four military hostages, the country’s defense minister said on Saturday, in the guerrilla group’s most violent act since the armed forces killed its leader, Alfonso Cano, in a raid earlier this month.
Gunmen in Mali kidnapped three European tourists and killed a fourth in the Mali town of Timbuktu on Friday, a day after two French nationals were taken at gunpoint from their hotel in the same remote desert region.
Three French humanitarian aid workers kidnapped by an offshoot of al-Qaeda in Yemen on May 28 arrived home in France on Monday after more than five months in captivity.
Turkish security forces shot dead a suspected Kurdish rebel hijacker in a pre-dawn raid early Saturday, ending a 12-hour hostage situation on a high-speed ferry in northwest Turkey, authorities said.
At least four hijackers claiming to be Kurdish rebels took control of a ferry carrying 25 people off Turkey's north-western coast on Friday, according to the country's transport minister.
At least 13 people were killed Monday when Iraqi security forces tried to rescue a group of officers and civilians taken hostage by suicide bombers in a police station.
A video of three French citizens kidnapped in Yemen in May was posted on a Yemeni website on Monday. In the video, a male hostage bemoans the French government for failing to secure their release.
Osama bin Laden planned to use al Qaeda-held French hostages in North Africa, possibly by killing them, to discredit Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of France’s 2012 presidential election, a radio station said on Friday.
The four French nationals held hostage by al Qaeda’s north African offshoot in Niger since last September are well and negotiations for their release are continuing, a negotiator has told AFP.
