Hostages 'killed before rescue'

The Briton and Italian kidnapped in Nigeria were abducted by a splinter cell of a radical Islamist sect and murdered before a failed commando rescue operation, the nation’s secret police said.

Nigeria’s secretive State Security Service also said the mastermind of the kidnapping by members of a sect known as Boko Haram died in their custody after suffering gunshot wounds during his arrest before the raid.