As the last of five freed British hostages disappeared into the helicopter sent to whisk them back to safety, Ashenafi Mekonne’s heart sank. “When the foreigners go they will be free to kill us, we thought this was it . . . for us it was over,” he told The Times, after arriving back in the Ethiopian capital 48 days later than the Britons.

Mr Mekonnen, 25, was one of a group of eight Ethiopians kidnapped along with five British Embassy officials in the Ethiopian desert on March 1 and marched off at gunpoint into neighbouring Eritrea. The British hostages were released after 12 days. Their fellow hostages — their guides, mechanics and cooks for a trip into the inhospitable Danakil Depression — were not.

“The guards came and said, 'Get up, you are going'. We all stood up, but they told us to sit down again. It was clear only the Europeans were going;then we were very frightened. We knew the world would hear more about us if the foreigners were with us,” said Mr Mekonnen, a guide with the tour operator that organised the trip.

It was an emotional moment. The hostages all had links to the British Embassy: Peter Rudge, 33, the embassy's first secretary responsible for political affairs; Jonathan Ireland, 34, an administrative support worker at the British mission; Malcolm Smart, an official of the Department for International Development; Laure Beaufils, a French citizen also working for the department and Rosanna Moore, 49, a dual British-Italian citizen.

The two women in the party tearfully handed over what little they still had, some money and medicine, to the Ethiopians. The Westerners promised that they would do their best and then, after a tearful embrace, were gone. They were flown to Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, then back to Ethiopia and on to Britain for an official welcome at RAF Brize Norton and emotional family reunions.

“We were waiting every day to be executed, even at night when we slept they had guns pointed at us," said Yonas Mesfin, a 31-year-old mechanic. "They were not as friendly after the Europeans went, they do not like us Ethiopians and I thought we would never see Ethiopia again.”

The story dropped out of the headlines quickly and, as days became weeks, fears mounted that the Ethiopians would meet their fate at the hands of fierce Afar tribesmen, who for centuries have killed outsiders venturing into their territory without permission.

The freed British hostages have been tight-lipped since their release. Some believe they were ordered to keep quiet for fear of exacerbating tensions, but to many Ethiopians the silence has looked instead like abandonment. No one from the embassy has yet contacted the Ethiopians who were freed suddenly last week after almost two months in captivity.

The Ethiopians say that they owe their lives to the intervention of Afar elders from Ethiopia, who were themselves taken hostage after they trekked through the desert into Eritrea to find the missing group.

In contrast to the approach of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the elders - who hailed from the same Afar clan as the kidnappers - refused to leave the area unless they could take their fellow Ethiopians with them. They appealed to a centuries-old code of honour that said they were responsible for the safety of guests in their home area. “We made it clear, we would not go without them. Eventually the kidnappers agreed,” Musa A’Hamad, one of the elders, told The Times yesterday.

The initial group was believed to have been seized by a splinter faction of an Afar group demanding an independent state for tribesmen who currently straddle the borders of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti.

As ever in the war-racked Horn of Africa, the issue is more complicated. The group is supported by Ethiopia’s arch-enemy, Eritrea, which, Addis Ababa maintains, was behind the hostage taking. The two neighbours fought a border war between 1998 and 2000 that killed tens of thousands of people and are backing opposing sides in the ongoing conflict in Somalia.

Diplomats fear that the region could be heading for a fresh war that could plunge the entire region into conflict. Last week, Ethiopia also blamed Eritrea for an attack on a remote oil installation in the Ogaden region, near the border with Somalia, in which 74 Ethiopians and nine Chinese oil workers were killed.

The Ogaden National Liberation Front, which claimed responsibility, has links with Eritrea’s allies in Somalia. The group yesterday called for internationally mediated peace talks after releasing seven Chinese oil workers kidnapped during last week's attack to the International Committee of the Red Cross. One Somali and an Ethiopian oil worker were also released. All were reported to be in good health.