Soldiers Cédric de Pierrepont (left) and Alain Bertoncello, who were killed in a military operation in Burkina Faso on Friday. Photo: French Army via AP<doc-sep>PARIS (Reuters) - French commandos rescued four foreign hostages including two French citizens from a militant group in Burkina Faso, France’s military said on Friday, adding that two of the elite soldiers were killed in the night-time operation. The two French special forces soldiers Cedric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello who were killed in a night-time rescue of four foreign hostages including two French citizens in Burkina Fasso are seen in an undated photo released by French Army, May 10, 2019. Sirpa Marine/Handout via REUTERS French special forces carried out the raid under cover of dark over the night of Thursday-Friday, supported by U.S. intelligence and troops from France’s Barkhane operation deployed in the Sahel region to counter Islamist militants. All four hostages were safe, President Emmanuel Macron’s office said, adding that a U.S. woman and a South Korean woman were also freed in the covert operation. “The precise and determined actions of French soldiers allowed us to take out the kidnappers while protecting the lives of the hostages,” France’s army chief Francois Lecointre told a news conference, describing the militant group as “terrorists”. Four kidnappers were killed and two escaped, he said. “Those who attack France and the French know that we will spare no effort to track them and take them out. We will never abandon our citizens,” Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly told reporters. The French forces had not been aware of the presence of the U.S. and South Korean hostages ahead of the operation and they had been held for 28 days, Lecointre said. “We were not aware of their presence ... the American will be repatriated separately,” Parly said. “The contacts (with those countries) show that these countries were not necessarily aware of their presence.” A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said the United States was grateful for the successful recovery of the hostages, including a U.S. citizen, and offered condolences to the families of the two solders killed. “The successful operation demonstrates the importance of our historic alliance with France. We reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Burkina Faso and Benin in the face of these threats,” she said. South Korea had confirmed the identity of the South Korean hostage, a woman in her 40s, its foreign ministry said. South Korea offered condolences to the families of the soldiers killed and was sincerely grateful to France for the rescue, the ministry said. Slideshow ( 3 images ) France, the former colonial power in the region, intervened in Mali in 2013 against Islamist militants then occupying Mali’s north and has since kept about 4,500 troops in the Sahel. The region has seen a spike in violence by militants linked to al Qaeda and Islamic State in past years, highlighting the difficulty international partners face in restoring stability. France’s defense ministry identified the fallen soldiers as two elite naval commandos. Burkina Faso’s President Roch Kabore hailed the hostages’ release and offered condolences to the soldiers’ families. “The joint military intervention that allowed us to achieve these results shows our common engagement in fighting against the forces of evil,” Kabore said in a Facebook post. SPREADING INSTABILITY The two French tourists were kidnapped on May 1 in Benin’s Pendjari National Park, which lies on Benin’s northern frontier with Burkina Faso. Their safari guide was found dead, his body riddled with bullets, and their vehicle burned. [nL5N22H0YC] The French government had warned its citizens against traveling to parts of Benin near the Burkina Faso border because of the risk of kidnapping. Swathes of northern and eastern Burkina Faso have been overrun by militants, leaving the government struggling to assert authority and forcing over 100,000 residents to flee. In February, Burkina Faso said militants were increasingly active in West Africa and instability in the Sahel was spreading to coastal countries such as Benin and Ivory Coast. Led by France, Western powers have also provided funding and weapons to a regional force made up of soldiers from Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mauritania to combat jihadists. But the so-called G5 force has been hobbled by delays in disbursing the money and poor coordination between the five countries, while insecurity has escalated in the border region between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.<doc-sep>PARIS — A raid led by French armed forces rescued four hostages in northern Burkina Faso on Friday, as a group of kidnappers were attempting to take them to Mali, the French authorities said. Two French soldiers died in the overnight raid. The hostages included two Frenchmen, an American and a South Korean. It was not clear who had abducted them or was holding them, but a number of armed insurgent and terrorist groups, including the ISIS and Al Qaeda, operate in the region. At a news conference on Friday, France’s armed forces chief, Gen. François Lecointre, said the hostages were on their way to be transferred to the Macina Liberation Front, an Islamist militant group in Mali, and that it would have been “absolutely impossible” to set up a raid once the hostages were in the group’s hands. Patrick Picque and Laurent Lassimouillas, the two French citizens, were abducted on May 1 while on vacation in Benin’s Pendjari National Park, on the border with Burkina Faso, where terrorist groups have stepped up attacks in recent months. Their car was found burned and their driver dead.<doc-sep>An American citizen is among a group of four hostages who have been freed in western Africa following a French special forces military operation that resulted in the deaths of two of their own soldiers, the Elysee announced Friday. France said the hostages were rescued Thursday night following a battle in Burkina Faso. PASTOR, 5 OTHERS KILLED IN BURKINA FASO CHURCH ATTACK The statement from France said President Emmanuel Macron "bows with emotion and gravity at the sacrifice of our two soldiers, who gave their lives to save those of our fellow citizens". They were identified as petty officers Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello. A Facebook post by the French Navy added that both men received numerous awards and recognitions throughout their military careers, such as the Gold Level of the National Defense Medal. The hostages who were rescued, according to France, were a U.S. citizen, a South Korean national, and French nationals Patrick Picque and Laurent Lassimouillas. The Frenchmen were tourists who were kidnapped during a safari in Benin last week, Reuters reported. The circumstances surrounding the capture of the other two were not immediately clear. TRUMP SAYS US CITIZEN WHO WAS HELD HOSTAGE IN YEMEN FOR 18 MONTHS HAS BEEN FREED According to one security source on the ground, Benin – where the hostages were taken – has been especially unstable following parliamentary elections in March, after electoral authorities ruled that only two parties - both loyal to the current President Patrice Talon – met the requirements to take part. “This generated to a high-level of vulnerability coupled with instability in the borders of Burkina Faso,” said the source. “The kidnap has all the markings of the interplay between organized kidnapping gangs and jihadist groups. The death of the two French Special Forces indicates the strength and depth of these groups in capacity, local knowledge, and atmospherics.” Another U.S. intelligence analyst in the region pointed out that an array of militias have “expanded operations” and that the situation has become especially inflamed in recent months. Islamic extremists have become increasingly active in Burkina Faso, raising worries the militants could be infiltrating northern Benin and neighboring Togo as well. While it is not yet clear who abducted the group and why, neighboring Burkina Faso – once considered a beacon of calm in the otherwise terror-teeming region – has been a growing hotbed for some time. Over the past six months, at least 5,000 people have been killed in the Sahel – the sub-Saharan region of northern Africa – amid an escalation of inter-ethnic violence ranging from bombings to massacres to suicide attacks. Fox News also reported last year that Al Qaeda too had gained a foothold in the region, spilling over the porous border from Mali with weapons obtained in leftover Gaddafi stockpiles ascertained in Libya seven years ago. Notably, abductions have also risen in the region and officials have been cautioning that more and more terrorist groups view seizing foreign tourists as a chance to fund their violent reigns with ransom payments. The Sahel region near where the French citizens were kidnapped is as an ecological transition zone between the Sahara desert and Africa’s savannahs farther south. It has been roamed by militants in recent years who have targeted French nationals and other Europeans for kidnappings and demanded millions of dollars for their release. NGO groups operating on the ground also told Fox News that while French passports were once considered relatively safe compared to other nationalities like the U.S., they have become especially red-flagged by armed groups. As it stands, more than 4,500 French troops are deployed to the area. While the identity of the freed American has not been public, one former Pentagon official stressed that there are U.S. citizens – not just tourists – who have vanished from the area in recent areas, one of importance being aid worker Jeffrey Woodke, now 59, who was last seen in Niger in October 2016. The U.S. State Department, in a travel advisory issued in early April, warned Americans to "reconsider travel" to Burkina Faso as "terrorist groups continue plotting attacks and kidnappings... and may conduct attacks anywhere." CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP The Associated Press contributed to this report.<doc-sep>
French commandos have rescued four western hostages who had been seized by a militant group in Burkina Faso, in a “complex” operation in which two French special forces soldiers were killed, authorities in Paris said. The elite troops freed two French tourists – Patrick Picque and Laurent Lassimouillas, who disappeared on 1 May while on holiday in the remote Pendjari national park in neighbouring Benin. France’s armed forces minister, Florence Parly, said four kidnappers were killed in the overnight military raid in which the troops also rescued a woman from America and and a South Korean woman , who they did not know were also being held and appeared to have been seized 28 days ago. The raid was carried out under cover of darkness by special forces from France’s Barkhane operation, with what Parly described a “precious support” by US intelligence. French troops have been deployed across the Sahel region, with 4,500 soldiers sent to Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad as part of a mission against jihadist groups. The dead soldiers were named as Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello, part of the Taskforce Sabre unit based in Burkina Faso. A total of 24 French soldiers from the Barkhane force have died in the region since 2013 when France intervened in Mali to drive back jihadist groups which had taken control of the north of the country and the towns of Timbuktu and Gao. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, expressed condolences for the two French soldiers killed and thanked French special forces and those who worked alongside them to free the hostages. Macron has repeatedly called on France’s allies to help fund and train a new regional African military force called the G5 Sahel, which experts continue to see as under-equipped and still heavily dependent on French firepower. The location of the raid indicated that the French tourists had been kidnapped in Benin and taken over the border into Burkina Faso, where Islamist terrorist and other militant groups have stepped up attacks in recent months. US special forces and drones are also thought to operate in the violence-hit Sahel region, which France fears could become further destabilised as jihadist groups are pushed out of north Africa, Iraq and Syria. Burkina Faso has suffered from increasingly frequent and deadly attacks attributed to a number of jihadist groups, including Ansarul Islam, Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara. The French tourists went missing with a wildlife guide on the last leg of their holiday in usually peaceful Benin on a visit to the Pendjari national park, which is known for its elephants and lions, lies close to the porous border with Burkina Faso. The badly disfigured body of the French tourists’ guide Fiacre Gbedji was found shortly after they disappeared, as well as their abandoned 4x4 Toyota truck. The freed men, a music teacher and a shopkeeper working in the Paris region, are expected to travel back to France this weekend. “We’ll travel up to Paris to welcome them off the plane,” Picque’s father Jean-Claude, told AFP. “They [the authorities] told us that hostage-takings can be very long, but in the end it worked out OK, but not for the soldiers.”