PARIS: The two
French tourists rescued from their kidnappers in Burkina Faso this week were
seized in an area of Benin that France has long advised travellers to avoid,
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said yesterday. "The zone where our
two citizens were has for some time now been considered a red zone, which means
it's a zone where you shouldn't go, where you're taking significant risks if
you do go," Le Drian told Europe 1 radio.

The foreign ministry's
travel advisory website lists the areas of northern Benin near the border with
Burkina Faso as "Formally Discouraged," including Pendjari National
Park. It warns of "the presence of armed terrorist groups and the risk of
kidnapping." The French tourists, Patrick Picque, 51, and Laurent
Lassimouillas, 46, disappeared during a tour of Pendjari on May 1. The
disfigured body of their guide was found shortly after they were reported
missing, along with their abandoned Toyota truck.

Intelligence
agencies tracked their captors across the semi-desert terrain of eastern
Burkina Faso, where it appeared they would soon cross the border into Mali.
Officials feared the hostages would be handed over to the Macina Liberation
Front (FLM), a jihadist group formed in 2015 that is aligned with Al-Qaeda in
the region. French President Emmanuel Macron gave the order for the nighttime
raid Thursday on the militants' camp, in which Picque and Lassimouillas were
freed, along with an American woman and a South Korean woman.

The French
commandos were unaware of the presence of the two other hostages, officials
said. Four of the six kidnappers were killed, but two French soldiers also died
in the raid. Picque and Lassimouillas, along with the South Korean hostage who
has not yet been identified, arrived in Ouagadougou on Saturday, where they
were to meet with Burkina's President Roch Marc Christian Kabore, according to
an AFP reporter at the presidential palace.

"Our
thoughts go out to the families of the soldiers, and to the soldiers who lost
their lives in freeing us from this hell," Lassimouillas said in a brief
statement. He and Picque were to return to Paris later yesterday, where Macron
and Le Drian are to meet them at the Villacoublay military airport southwest of
the capital.

'Avoid the
sacrifices'

Although Benin
has long been spared the unrest seen in Mali and Burkina Faso, French officials
have warned that jihadist insurgents could extend their operations into the
sparsely populated desert regions further south. "The threat is evolving
and has become much more mobile, and now countries to the south of Mali have
become targets," Le Drian said yesterday. "The greatest precautions
must be taken in these regions to avoid these types of kidnappings, and avoid
the sacrifices required by our soldiers," he said.

France's
Operation Barkhane counts some 4,500 troops deployed in Mali, Burkina Faso,
Niger and Chad to help local forces battle militant groups. The raid on the
kidnappers was led by the elite Hubert commando unit of the French naval
special forces, which was deployed to the Sahel at the end of March. They were
assisted by Burkina and Benin authorities and by the United States, which
provided intelligence and support. A total of 24 French soldiers have died in
the region since 2013 when France intervened to drive back jihadist groups who
had taken control of northern Mali. - AFP