Militants claim to have kidnapped Red Cross team in Mali

Published February 11, 2014
MUJAO is one of the groups allied to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which occupied the north of Mali in 2012 before they were partly driven from the region by a French-led military intervention in January last year.— File photo
MUJAO is one of the groups allied to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which occupied the north of Mali in 2012 before they were partly driven from the region by a French-led military intervention in January last year.— File photo

BAMAKO: A leading Islamist militant group has kidnapped a team of Red Cross workers in northern Mali who had been reported missing, an official from the militant group said on Tuesday.

The members of the International Committee of the Red Cross team “are alive and in good health” in the hands of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a MUJAO official told AFP in a telephone call.

MUJAO is one of the groups allied to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb which occupied the north of Mali in 2012 before they were partly driven from the region by a French-led military intervention in January last year.

“Thanks to God we seized a 4X4 (vehicle) of the enemies of Islam with their accomplices,” MUJAO official Yoro Abdoulsalam said, confirming it was the ICRC team reported missing in recent days.

He gave no other details.

ICRC spokesman Alexis Heeb told AFP Monday that four ICRC staff members and a veterinarian from another aid organisation went missing Saturday along with their vehicle on the road between the towns of Kidal and Gao.

All five individuals are Malian citizens.

“At this stage we're exploring all possibilities. We're extremely worried and we're contacting everyone to try to localise them,” Heeb said at the time.

Christoph Luedi, head of the ICRC Mali delegation, said in a statement that the group “was on the way from Kidal to their base in Gao”.

For security reasons, ICRC teams make regular contact every few hours with their base when they are on mission, and the team had done so for part of its journey.

ICRC operations in Mali range from visiting people detained during the country's conflict to providing aid to the hundreds of thousands of people who were driven from their homes by fighting.

Mali descended into chaos when Tuareg rebels and Islamist groups took over the north after a military coup in March 2012 far to the south in the capital Bamako.

The humanitarian crisis sparked by the conflict came on top of years of drought in the Sahel region that has left 800,000 Malians relying on food aid.

The rebels started an advance on Bamako that led to a military intervention by former colonial power France in January 2013.

French troops pushed the al Qaeda-linked militants out of northern towns early last year and have kept up operations against residual groups of insurgents.

France is winding down its force from a peak of around 5,000 soldiers but is to keep 1,000 troops in Mali beyond the spring.

The UN peacekeepers took over security in July last year from a pan-African military mission which had been supporting the French troops.

The UN mission played a key security role in presidential polls last year which saw former premier Ibrahim Boubacar Keita become the country's first democratically elected leader since the 2012 coup.

Last month, five UN peacekeepers were injured when their vehicle ran over a landmine in Kidal.

Malian security and other officials were not immediately available for comment about the latest developments.

Opinion

Budgeting without people

Budgeting without people

Even though the economy is a critical issue, discussions about it involve a select few who are not really interested in communicating with the people.

Editorial

Iranian tragedy
Updated 21 May, 2024

Iranian tragedy

Due to Iran’s regional and geopolitical influence, the world will be watching the power transition carefully.
Circular debt woes
21 May, 2024

Circular debt woes

THE alleged corruption and ineptitude of the country’s power bureaucracy is proving very costly. New official data...
Reproductive health
21 May, 2024

Reproductive health

IT is naïve to imagine that reproductive healthcare counts in Pakistan, where women from low-income groups and ...
Wheat price crash
Updated 20 May, 2024

Wheat price crash

What the government has done to Punjab’s smallholder wheat growers by staying out of the market amid crashing prices is deplorable.
Afghan corruption
20 May, 2024

Afghan corruption

AMONGST the reasons that the Afghan Taliban marched into Kabul in August 2021 without any resistance to speak of ...
Volleyball triumph
20 May, 2024

Volleyball triumph

IN the last week, while Pakistan’s cricket team savoured a come-from-behind T20 series victory against Ireland,...