Ethiopian rebels release the 5 European hostages in Eritrea

Mar 13, 2007 (LONDON) — Five Europeans who were abducted in Ethiopia almost two weeks ago have been released in neighboring Eritrea and are in good health, the British government said Tuesday.

Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said the three British men, an Anglo-Italian and a French woman — all British diplomats or their relatives — were released earlier Tuesday and had been taken to the British embassy in Asmara, the Eritrean capital.

“The five are being fed and given fresh clean clothes,” Beckett told reporters at the Foreign Office in London. “They are seeing a doctor and medical checks are continuing, but I understand they are broadly in good health.”

Yemani Gebremeskel, the Eritrean president’s spokesman, declined to give details on the role Eritrea played other than to say it had helped influence traditional elders in the desert region where the hostages were being held.

“We are not making public statements,” Gebremeskel told The Associated Press. “They have arrived at the British Embassy in Asmara.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman welcomed the release and thanked the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments for their help.

British officials on Tuesday lifted a reporting restriction on identifying the five. They are Peter Rudge, first secretary of the British embassy in Addis Ababa; embassy worker Jonathan Ireland; Malcolm Smart and Laure Beaufils of the Department for International Development; and Rosanna Moore, an Anglo-Italian whose husband Michael Moore heads the British Council’s Ethiopia office. Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D’Alema expressed “strong satisfaction” at the release of Moore and the others.

Michael Moore, contacted in the Ethiopian capital, said he was delighted. “I have just watched the television now,” he told The Associated Press. “At this stage I’m just so overwhelmed I am almost in tears.”

Moore said he was now concerned for the well-being of eight Ethiopians who were also seized. So far there have been no reports of their release.

Five other Ethiopians who had been with the group had earlier been reported to have escaped or been released.

Beckett said officials “continue to be concerned for the welfare” of the eight Ethiopians still unaccounted for.

The hostages were on a tourist trip to the remote Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia when they were seized at gunpoint along with 13 Ethiopians. Their 4×4 vehicles were later discovered abandoned, riddled with bullet holes and grenade shrapnel.

Belete Tekiwe, the deputy government spokesman for Ethiopia, said there he had no information about the fate of the Ethiopians taken with the European hostages.

Ethiopian officials had said the hostages may have been taken by rebel gunmen and marched across the porous Ethiopian border into neighboring Eritrea. Eritrea has denied any involvement.

Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been strained since Eritrea gained independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. The two countries fought a bloody two year border war that ended in 2000.

(AP)