A family of seven has been kidnapped in northern Cameroon while on vacation on Tuesday and reports say that one of Nigeria's Islamic extremist sects could be behind the kidnapping.
According to Euronews, the family of three adults and four children were taken from a national park in the far north of the country, close to the border with Nigeria.
It has become increasingly more dangerous for French tourists to vacation in Africa after France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country's north. A total of 15 French natives are currently being held in western Africa - in addition to the family of seven kidnapped in Cameroon, there is one other in Nigeria and seven thought to be in northern Mali.
"They have been taken by a terrorist group that we know and that is in Nigeria," French President Francois Hollande told reporters during a visit to Greece. Islamist militants in northern Nigeria now pose the biggest threat to stability in Africa's top oil-producing state.
France's defense minister said Wednesday that there was no proven link between the French operation in Mali and the Cameroon kidnapping. But, speaking on France-2 television, Jean-Yves Le Drian said: "These are groups who adhere to the same fundamentalism and who have the same methods, whether it is in Mali, in Somalia or in Nigeria, who want to create a lawless zone" stretching from the Atlantic across the southern edge of the Sahara to Sudan.
According to local media in Cameroon, sources say that the three adults have been separated from the four children.
As of Tuesday night, no group had claimed responsibility for the latest kidnapping, which came on a day of fierce engagements between French and Islamist forces in the desolate desert terrain of northeastern Mali.
