A French hostage kidnapped in Somalia is believed to have been killed during a failed rescue operation, the French defence ministry says. A French soldier was killed during the raid, a defence ministry statement released on Saturday, said, while another was missing. The hostage was reportedly a French special forces officer, who goes by the pseudonym “Denis”. Seventeen Somali fighters were also killed in the fighting between French forces and al-Shabab fighters in southern Somalia, the statement said. “Faced with the instransigence of the terrorists, who refused to negotiate for three and and half years and who were holding Denis Allex in inhumane conditions, an operation was planned and carried out,” said the ministry. Al-Shabab confirmed that the clash had taken place, but, in a statement, the group said that Allex was not present at the location of the raid. “Mujahideen fighters defeated the so-called commandos of the French government who tried to rescue a hostage, and they [the commandos] left the bodies of several of their own at the site of the attack,” Sheikh Mohamed Abdallah, a local military commander, told the AFP news agency. Abdallah is the commander of Bulomarer, where the raid allegedly took place.
