The Ansaru Islamic extremist militant sect, a breakaway group from the Boko Haram Islamist sect, on Saturday claimed responsibility for the killing of seven foreigners kidnapped by its members in Bauchi State in February.
In a message posted on its website, the group claimed to have taken the action following reports that a British plane was cited in Bauchi.
“As a result of this operation, the seven hostages were killed,” the group said in the statement, which also assured that a video of the killings would be posted online. An online image accompanying the posting appeared to show a gunmen standing over dead bodies.
The message from Ansaru could not be immediately verified, although it included photographs the group claimed showed the dead men who were kidnapped from the compound of a construction company in February.
Those kidnapped include three Lebanese and one Briton one Greek, one Italian and one Filipino ― all employees of Setraco, a Lebanese construction company with an operation in Bauchi State.
British officials as well as Nigerian military spokesmen declined to immediately comment, according to Associate Press, while a presidential spokesman and a spokeswoman for the State Security Service could not be immediately reached.
The group claimed that a message from Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan saying the government would do anything in its power to free the hostages also sparked the group’s decision to kill them.
Ansaru also claimed that its fighters kidnapped the six foreigners on 16th February from a construction company’s camp at Jama’are, a town about 200 kilometers (125 miles) north of Bauchi, the capital of Bauchi State.
The gunmen first assaulted a local prison and burnt police trucks, after which they blew up a back fence at the construction company’s compound and took over, killing a guard in the process, according to witnesses and the Police.
In January 2013, Ansaru declared itself a splinter group independent of the more notorious Boko Haram. Boko Haram, whose name means “Western education is sacrilege,” has been at the forefront of a guerrilla campaign of bombings and shootings that have claimed over 1000 lives.
Britain previously linked Ansaru to the May 2011 kidnapping of Christopher McManus, who was abducted with Italian Franco Lamolinara from a home in Kebbi State. The men were held for months, before their captors killed them in March 2012 during a failed Nigerian military raid backed up by British special forces in Sokoto.