The militants who attacked a train in northwestern Nigeria in late March released 11 hostages in an exchange with authorities, two security sources told AFP on Sunday.
Two sources said that after several months of negotiations, 11 hostages, including six women and five men, were released in exchange for the kidnappers’ children. “Yesterday (Saturday), 11 passengers arrested by militants were released in exchange for eight captured children of the attackers,” one security source said Sunday.
Another security source said: “The agreement was to release all the women hostages and detainees in exchange for children, but they backed down and released six women and five men.” Both sources requested anonymity. They said the hostages were taken to Kaduna (northwest) on Saturday afternoon and then transferred to the capital Abuja for medical treatment.
On March 28, militants detonated a bomb on a train connecting Nigeria’s capital Abuja with Kaduna, killing eight people, kidnapping an unknown number of passengers and sparking outrage in Africa’s most populous country.
A week later, one of the hostages, a bank manager, was released by the kidnappers as a sign of “sympathy for Ramadan” due to his age. At the end of May, they broadcast a video of the hostages, threatening to be shot because of the lack of coordination with the authorities.
Security sources believe al-Ansar fighters from the al-Qaeda jihadist group collaborated with the thugs during the attack. The Al Ansar group broke away from Boko Haram in 2012, which was the dominant terrorist organization in northwest Nigeria for several years. Crime gangs in the northwest operate for money and don’t necessarily have ideological motives, but potential alliances between mobsters and jihadists are a concern.
