March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Five British embassy staff kidnapped in Ethiopia on March 1 have been released, U.K. Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said. The four Britons and a French citizen were released earlier today to the authorities in neighboring Eritrea, Beckett said in a televised statement from her office in London. ``I understand that broadly they are all in good health,'' Beckett said. The U.K. is ``concerned'' about the eight Ethiopians who were with the group when they were captured and have not been located, she said.
Eritrea has denied claims its forces seized the foreigners in a cross-border raid. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a border war between 1998 and 2000 that left as many as 100,000 people dead and displaced 250,000 Eritreans. Beckett said the five are being cared for at the British embassy in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea.
The Foreign Office named them as Peter Rudge and Jonathan Ireland, two of its officials at the British Embassy in Addis Ababa; Malcolm Smart and Laure Beaufils from the U.K. Department for International Development in Addis Ababa; and Rosanna Moore, the wife of the head of the British Council in Addis Ababa.
``We continue to be concerned about the welfare of the Ethiopians who were taken at the same time as the British embassy group, about whom we don't yet have news,'' Beckett said. |