Nigerian gunmen free train hostages, get own children back

• Gunmen who attacked a train in Nigeria in March freed 11 of their hostages.
• Released captives in exchange for eight of the assailants’ children.
• Ansaru jihadists cooperated with an armed criminal gang to stage the attack.

Gunmen who attacked a train in northwest Nigeria in March freed 11 of their hostages in exchange for the release of their own children, Security sources told AFP on Sunday.

According to the sources, the captives were released on Saturday after weeks of negotiations with the authorities in exchange for eight of the assailants’ children, who had been seized by the army.

In May, the attackers released a video in which they threatened to kill the hostages if an agreement could not be reached.

“Eleven of the passengers being held by the gunmen were released yesterday,” one source said.

“They were swapped with eight children of the attackers who were taken in a previous (army) raid,” the source added.

“The agreement was for them to free all the female hostages in their custody in exchange for the children but they later reneged and released six women and five men,” a second security source said.

Both sources asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak on the issue.

The hostages were taken to Kaduna city in the northwest on Saturday evening before being transferred to the capital, Abuja, for medical attention, the sources added.

On March 28, armed men blew up a train travelling between Abuja to Kaduna and opened fire, killing eight people, wounding 26 and taking an unspecified number of passengers hostage.

A week later, they freed one hostage — a top bank executive — as a goodwill gesture for Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting, because of his “advanced age”.

In late May, the group posted a video of other hostages, threatening to execute all their captives if the government refused to meet their demands within in a week. They withdrew the threat several days later.

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Security sources believe Ansaru jihadists cooperated with an armed criminal gang to stage the attack, which marked a major escalation in violence in northwest Nigeria.

Ansaru, which split from the Islamist group Boko Haram in 2012, is believed to be active in central Kogi state, and around Kaduna and Abuja.

In northwest and central Nigeria, gangs of bandits with no ideological or religious motivations have been known to kidnap for ransom.

However, local authorities and analysts are concerned that some are forming alliances with Islamist militants for pragmatic and financial reasons.

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