French secret service hostage and soldiers killed in Somali rescue mission

A French hostage and two French soldiers have been killed during a failed secret service rescue mission in Somalia.

The failure of the overnight helicopter raid in the southern town of Bulo Marer, about 70 miles south of Mogadishu, came as the French military continued a separate African operation in Mali.

The French defence ministry said the hostage was a member of the secret service, the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), which directed the operation.

The ministry said the agent, known by his pseudonym Denis Allex, was killed by his captors, members of the Islamist group al-Shabaab, who mounted stiff resistance to the French forces' operation. Seventeen fighters from the group, which had held Allex hostage for three years, were also killed.

The French defence ministry said Allex had been kidnapped in Somalia in July 2009 along with a colleague who escaped the following month.

France said it was acting with the backing of west African states. The former colonial power in Mali and other countries in the Sahel region has hundreds of troops stationed across west and central Africa. "The threat is a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe," Le Drian said.

The west African regional bloc, Ecowas, will begin sending soldiers to Mali on Monday as part of a mission to push Islamist fighters from the country's north, an Ivory Coast government official said on Saturday.