Kidnapped German engineer killed in Nigeria

A German engineer kidnapped in northern Nigeria in January has been killed by his captors after the military launched a failed bid to rescue him on Thursday.

A security source told the Agence France Presse that a military task force raided a hideout in the northern city of Kano where Edgar Raupach was being held by gunmen, and found the hostage shot and stabbed.

Between two and five kidnappers were also reported to have been killed during the raid, according to the news agency.

It is not clear who was behind Raupach’s kidnapping earler this year, but in March a video purportedly produced by Al Qaeda’s North African wing, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), demanded that a woman imprisoned on terror charges in Germany be freed in exchange for the engineer’s release, according to the BBC.

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A spokeswoman at the German foreign ministry could not immediately confirm that Raupach had been killed, but said that the German embassy in Abuja and the ministry were “working intensively to clarify the situation,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

Thursday’s violence came as Italy’s foreign ministry confirmed that an Italian engineer had been kidnapped in Nigeria’s western state of Kwara earlier this week. In March an Italian and a British engineer abducted in the north-west of the country last year, were killed when UK and Nigerian forces tried to free them in a botched raid. 

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