Britain is sending a team of officials to the West African state of Liberia to try to free a group of western air workers taken hostage. Four of the hostages are British, one is Italian and one is Norwegian. The team will try to contact the Liberian government to offer assistance. Britain has no embassy in Liberia, a country that has been ravaged by seven years of civil war and is still stalked by armed groups, even though the conflict officially ended in 1997.
The four British aid workers made radio contact with the charity they work for, and they said that they are safe and unharmed. The medical director of the London-based medical charity, Merlin, Dr. Bruce Laurence, said that the charity had managed to contact one of the workers, Dr. Mike Roe, by radio, and had been reassured about the safety of the team. The charity's next aim was to get in touch with the kidnappers, Dr. Laurence added.
The six Western aid workers were seized last night in the West African state of Liberia. Reports of the kidnapping came shortly after the President, Charles Taylor, announced that rebel forces had invaded from neighbouring Guinea. The British government says that the six were kidnapped by an armed gang in the Northern town of Kalahun that dissidents are understood to have occupied.
Liberia has ordered the closure of the borders with Guinea and Sierra Leone. President Taylor did not identify the dissident forces, but he has blamed previous border attacks on supporters of his former rivals during the Liberian civil war. A statement from Merlin last night said that the workers had been seized between 7am and 8am after armed men entered their compound in Kolahun, near the Sierra Leone and Guinea borders. The other two aid workers seized were Norwegian and Italian staff working for the charity Medicins Sans Frontieres.
The Merlin team was in Liberia to help rehabilitate hospitals and clinics destroyed in the civil war. The charity is supporting 21 health centres and two hospitals in the country, including Kolahun hospital, with training, equipment and basic drugs. Merlin is also involved in fighting malaria and Lassa fever, as part of a wider disease control programme in the country.
The kidnappings came just as five British oil workers, who were kidnapped in Nigeria, were released. The British Foreign Office minister, Geoff Hoon, said that they had not ruled out the possibility that it was a copycat kidnapping, following the recent hostage taking in Sierra Leone. The last of the 40 members of a UN-led team, who were taken captive in Sierra Leone last Wednesday, were released yesterday.
