Four missing including expat found safe in Burkina Faso: govt

• Four people, including one foreign national, have been found safe and well after being reported missing in Burkina Faso.
• The four members of a team of service providers on the Backbone Project government telecommunications project reported.
• Kidnapping for ransom is not uncommon in the West African country which is in the grip of increasing militant violence.

OUAGADOUGOU: Four people, including one foreign national, have been found safe and well after being reported missing in Burkina Faso, a minister said Sunday.

The four, including an expatriate who a security official said was an Asian national, were reported missing Friday after their vehicle was discovered abandoned with its doors open in the southwestern Cascades region.

But the ministry of digital economy and postal development stated they had been found unharmed following an apparent kidnap attempt.

"The four members of a team of service providers on the Backbone Project government telecommunications project reported missing have been found safe and well," a ministry statement read, without giving further details.

"The four were found Saturday evening several kilometres (miles) from Sideradougou," a southwestern departmental capital, a security source told AFP.

Another security source told AFP that security forces had combed the area where they went missing and those efforts were "doubtless ... what pushed the kidnappers to release them."

The four were working on a project to lay down fibre-optic cable to connect Burkina Faso with the rest of the world, according to the ministry. The contract is being handled by the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

Kidnapping for ransom is not uncommon in the West African country which is in the grip of increasing militant violence that the armed forces have been unable to stem.