Hostages that were rescued from militants in Burkina Faso by French commandos have offered their condolences to the families of the two soldiers that were killed in the rescue operation.
The French special forces freed two Frenchmen kidnapped in neighbouring Benin more than a week earlier as well as an American woman and a South Korean woman who were being held with them.
The two Frenchmen, Laurent Lassimouillas and Patrick Picque, and the South Korean woman, who has not yet been identified, met with Burkinabe President Roch Kabore at the presidential palace in the capital Ouagadougou.
The three are due to be welcomed by French President Emmanuel Macron at a military airport outside Paris later on Saturday. The American, who has not been identified either, is being repatriated to the United States.
“All our thoughts go to the families of the soldiers and to the soldiers who lost their lives to free us from this hell,” Lassimouillas told reporters.
“We wanted to present our condolences right away to those families because we feel ambivalent about everything that happened to us,” he said.
The French government identified the two soldiers killed as Cédric de Pierrepont and Alain Bertoncello, both officers in the naval special forces.
French officials said on Friday that it was not yet clear who had kidnapped them in Benin but described their captors in Burkina Faso as “terrorists” who planned to hand them over to an al Qaeda affiliate in neighbouring Mali.
