Reinnier Kaze / AFP - Getty Images

(From left) Former French hostages Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, his wife Albane and his brother Cyril pose at the French embassy in Yaounde on Friday. The family of seven were kidnapped in Cameroon in February by an Islamist movement from neighboring Nigeria.

YAOUNDE, Cameroon -- A French family of seven, including four children, have been released in Cameroon following secret talks, France said on Friday, ending two months of captivity in the hands of Nigerian Islamist militants.

Armed men on motorcycles snatched the family on February 19 while they were on holiday near the Waza national park in north Cameroon, some 6 miles from the Nigerian border.

"I spoke to the father this morning ... He told me how happy and relieved he was," French President Francois Hollande told a news conference in Paris on Friday. "This is an immense relief. This will redouble our determination to free the hostages who remain."

Eight French hostages remain held by al Qaeda-linked Islamist militant groups in the Sahel region.

Hollande said there had been contacts over the last few weeks to discreetly free the family under French terms and denied any ransom was paid.

"France has not changed its position, which is not to pay ransoms," he said.

The father of the kidnapped family, Tanguy Moulin-Fournier, worked in Cameroon for French utility firm GDF Suez. He was kidnapped with his wife, two daughters and two sons, and his brother, who was visiting them on holiday.

"We are very happy to be released. I want to thank (Cameroon) President Paul Biya for making all the effort to ensure our release," his tired-looking wife, Albane Moulin-Fournier, said on Cameroon television, holding her smallest child.

Both adult males of the family had thick beards while the children looked drawn, and wore flip-flops, knee-length trousers and tee-shirts.

Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, secretary-general of Cameroon's presidency, said all family members were well.

State television showed the family descending from a plane where they were greeted on the tarmac by the French ambassador who took them to the embassy in the capital Yaounde.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was due to meet them there, a French official said, and they would be repatriated to France as soon as possible.

The release of the hostages is a rare piece of good news for Hollande's government, which is struggling to cut unemployment and has been hit by a tax fraud scandal which has forced its budget minister to resign.

Mostly Muslim northern Cameroon is considered an area within the operational sphere of Islamist militants including Boko Haram, Nigeria's biggest security threat.

Gunmen claiming to be from Boko Haram released videos of the family in March, threatening to kill them unless Nigeria and Cameroon released Muslim militants held in detention.

Cameroon denied it was holding any militants and it was unclear if any of the group's demands had been met.

Additional reporting by John Irish and Brian Love in Paris.

Related:

Nigeria in 'massive manhunt' for French hostages

French special forces join search for family of 7 kidnapped in Africa

French family with 4 children kidnapped by Islamists in Africa

Marc Preel / AFP - Getty Images

The French family, including four children, kidnapped in Cameroon on Tuesday were visiting Waza National Park, a source at the nature preserve said.

French special forces arrived in northern Cameroon on Wednesday to try to help locate a French family of seven, including four children, who were kidnapped by people thought to be Islamist militants and taken into Nigeria, officials in Cameroon said.

The abduction highlights the growing risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa since Paris sent forces into Mali to oust Islamist rebels occupying the country's north.

Ian Langsdon / EPA

French Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed the abduction in Cameroon of the family of seven at a Tuesday news conference.

Speaking on French television, Joseph Dion Ngute, a junior minister at the foreign ministry, said the kidnappers had put the hostages on motorcycles after their car broke down.

"They then took another woman hostage with her car and fled into Nigeria," he said. "Our forces and the Nigerian forces were alerted, but before they reacted the kidnappers had vanished."

It was not clear what had happened to the additional female hostage.

Security in the Dabanga area, six miles from the Nigerian border, where they were taken has been reinforced and "urgent measures" to locate the family have been put in place, he said.

It is the first case of foreigners being seized in the mostly Muslim north of Cameroon, a former French colony. But the region -- like others in West and North Africa with typically porous borders -- is considered to be within the operational sphere of Nigerian Islamist militant groups Boko Haram and Ansaru.

The father of the family, which included four children ages 5 to 12, worked for utility firm GDF Suez. French television reported that the father was from a family of winemakers in the Burgundy region.

Nigerian army spokesman Col. Sagir Musa said the armed forces were on alert, "ready to apprehend any criminal elements or terrorists that come into our areas."

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French family with 4 children kidnapped in Africa

Gunmen kill 9 polio health workers in Nigeria 

AFP - Getty Images / Thanassis Stavrakis

French President Francois Hollande speaks during a press conference after a meeting with Greece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras at Maximos mansion in Athens on Tuesday. The president said the seven French nationals kidnapped in Cameron were been taken by a "terrorist group that we know and that is in Nigeria."

Gunmen from Nigeria kidnapped a French family that included four children on Tuesday in northern Cameroon near the border with Nigeria, French President Francois Hollande said.

They were apparently tourists, he said.

The risk of attacks on French nationals and interests in Africa has risen since France sent forces into Mali last month to help oust Islamist rebels occupying the country's north.

"They have been taken by a terrorist group that we know and that is in Nigeria," Hollande told reporters during a visit to Greece. Islamist militants in northern Nigeria now pose the biggest threat to stability in Africa's top oil-producing state.

Radio France International had earlier reported the kidnapping, saying that the seven people were nabbed by armed men on motorbikes and were being taken towards Nigeria.

Western governments have grown concerned that Nigeria's radical Islamists may link up with groups elsewhere in the region, particularly al-Qaida's North African wing, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, given the conflict in nearby Mali.

The seven tourists were abducted at around 7 a.m. in a village about six miles from the Nigerian border near the Waza national park and Lake Chad in the extreme north of Cameroon where Westerners often go for holidays.

It was the first case of foreigners being seized in the mostly Muslim north of Cameroon, a former French colony.

"I see the hand of (Nigerian militants) Boko Haram in that part of Cameroon. France is in Mali, and it will continue until its mission is completed," Hollande said.

France intervened in Mali last month when Islamist rebels, after hijacking a rebellion by ethnic Tuareg MNLA separatists to seize control of the north in the confusion following a military coup, pushed south towards the capital, Bamako.

Eight French citizens are already being held in West Africa's Sahel region by al-Qaida-affiliated groups.

Cameroon Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said he could not immediately confirm the kidnapping report.

On Sunday, seven foreigners were snatched from the compound of Lebanese construction company Setraco in northern Nigeria's Bauchi state, and al-Qaida-linked Ansaru took responsibility.

Northern Nigeria is increasingly afflicted by attacks and kidnappings by Islamist militants. Ansaru, which rose to prominence only in recent months, has also claimed the abduction in December of a French national who is still missing.

An Ansaru statement said kidnappings were driven by "the transgression and atrocities done to the religion of Allah by the European countries in many places, such as Afghanistan and Mali."

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European Union approves €20 million in aid for Mali

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Nigeria cautiously welcomes Boko Haram ceasefire

This story was originally published on Tue Feb 19, 2013 11:06 AM EST

Reinnier Kaze / AFP - Getty Images

Cameroonian soldiers patrol on Dec. 15 during a field trip organized for the press at Bouba N'Djidda National Park in northern Cameroon.

BOUBA NDJIDA NATIONAL PARK, Cameroon - The welcome committee for Cameroon's Bouba Ndjida National Park, a former safari tourism destination, would not look out of place on a battlefield.

Faced with the threat of horse-mounted Sudanese elephant poachers armed with machine guns, the central African nation has deployed military helicopters and 600 soldiers to try to protect the park and its animals.

Its decision to call in the army follows a bloody incursion into the park last winter during which poachers from Sudan killed some 300 elephants, or 80 percent of the park's elephant population, within a few weeks.

Armed only with World War One-era rifles, the park's eco-guards were defenseless in the face of the Sudanese "jandjaweed" poachers who had traveled thousands of miles on horseback to seize the tusks.

The raid left hundreds of elephant corpses in its wake.

Elephants slaughtered, orphan found in latest Africa poaching

Many of the animals' faces had been hacked off and the bodies lay decomposing in a park that used to attract safari tourists in large numbers.

Cameroon says it is determined to make sure such a scene is never repeated.

"With the kind of deployment we have in the park here today, the message is very clear," Brigadier General Martin Tumenta told Reuters during a visit to the park. "Any poacher who finds himself here will simply be destroyed."

Boubandjida Safari Lodge via AP

The carcasses of elephants slaughtered by poachers are seen in Boubou Ndjida National Park, located in Cameroon, near the border with Chad, in this February 2012 photo.

Tens of thousands of elephants likely killed last year, experts say

Equipped with helicopters, night vision gear, and scores of jeeps, Cameroon's military has set up two garrisons in the park and several camps along Cameroon's border with Chad and the Central African Republic, Tumenta said.

Last winter's massacre followed a record year for elephant poaching in 2011, an illegal trade that has become a multi-billion dollar industry in Africa fueled by demand for ivory ornaments from China, some of whose citizens are increasingly wealthy.

Ivory sells for about $135 a pound on the black market, according to conservation group TRAFFIC, meaning that an average-sized tusk weighing can be sold for more than $2,000 -- a small fortune in central Africa, a region plagued by poverty and underdevelopment.

Officials said there was evidence that the Sudanese poachers were on their way back to the park - a territory of lush forests, rivers and hilly plains about the size of Luxembourg - now that the dry season had arrived, making travel easier.

"It is clear we are dealing with a very heavily-armed group of men carrying machine guns and mortars," said Tumenta, saying soldiers had seized some weapons and ivory from a poacher camp in the bush last year.

The World Wildlife Fund has called Cameroon's deployment a "bold and courageous move" to protect the region's dwindling elephant population.

However, local residents said the huge military presence was disturbing.

"It's now very dangerous because of the soldiers who are just everywhere in the bush," said Saidou Sule, a 48-year-old farmer from a village near Garoua, the provincial capital. 

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