Nigerian security officials say a German man kidnapped in January, allegedly by an al-Qaida-linked group, has been killed during a rescue attempt.
Officials said Edgar Fritz Raupach was killed by his captors as security forces tried to free him during a raid in the northern city of Kano.
VOA's Hausa Service reported the raid was carried out by Nigeria's anti-terrorism Joint Task Force, which has been criticized for botched rescue attempts before.
In March, kidnappers killed one British and one Italian hostage as the force tried to free them.
Raupach was abducted in Kano in January. In March, a group that said it was affiliated with al-Qaida's North African branch, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, told a Mauritanian news agency it was holding Raupach and demanded the release of a Muslim woman jailed in Germany in exchange for his freedom.
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb has kidnapped numerous Westerners across West Africa in recent years, mostly in the Sahel region.
Northern Nigeria has been plagued with violence by the Islamist militant sect Boko Haram, but the group has mostly carried out bombing and shooting attacks, rather than kidnappings.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.