'Ethiopian hostages safe'
20/03/2007 16:48  - (SA)  

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Asmara - The eight Ethiopian hostages still missing after the release last week of five Europeans captured with them in the Ethiopian desert are safe, said a rebel leader claiming to be holding them.

Musa Ibrahim Hamaddu, head of the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) rebel group, said the missing Ethiopians were alive and well.

"No one has died, they are safe. They are our people - we are Ethiopians, they are Ethiopians," said Musa in Asmara, speaking in the Afar language through a translator.

He gave no details of his group's specific demands for their release, but said it had changed its plans to free the eight hostages after the Ethiopian government accused ARDUF of being terrorists.

The Ethiopian drivers and guides were abducted with a British embassy-linked group of three men and two women on March 1 in the Afar region in northeast Ethiopia. The Europeans were released a week ago.

Musa warned that future visitors to Afar risked kidnap if they entered without rebel permission.

Bitter territorial war

"If they come from the Ethiopian side, then yes, they will be captured," he said, but insisted that the group's conflict was only with Ethiopia, not with foreigners.

Musa appeared alongside the five European ex-hostages in a video broadcast on Monday on Eritrean state television showing their release.

In the film, which made no mention of the Ethiopians, the rebel group said that it had carried out the kidnapping to prove its existence.

Eritrea has already said that separatist rebel group ARDUF, which opposes the division of the Afar people among Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, kidnapped the group.

The Ethiopian government on Monday denied that Afar rebels were behind the abduction despite the Eritrean television pictures, and once again laid the blame on Eritrea, a claim Eritrea has vehemently denied.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bitter territorial war between 1998 and 2000 and are still deeply at odds over their border.

Ethiopia said on Monday that it had launched a diplomatic offensive to help free the Ethiopian captives.

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