Bamako: Islamist group Ansar Dine said Thursday it was holding three Red Cross workers captured in northeastern Mali last weekend and called for the release of a jihadist arrested by French troops for their safe return.
"We have three people who work for the Red Cross. We want Barkhane (French forces) to free Miyatene Ag Mayaris before we will release them," Nourredine Ag Mohamed, a senior Ansar Dine militant, told AFP.
The trio were intercepted by Ansar Dine -- one of several active jihadist groups roaming Mali's north -- in the restive region of Kidal, where the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed it had last had contact with them on April 16.
The ICRC said Thursday it had not received the claim of responsibility but was working with several key players in Mali to ascertain what had happened.
"We are in contact with all the relevant people in the area ... to get hold of more precise information," ICRC spokeswoman Claire Kaplun told AFP at its Geneva base, including local leaders, the Malian authorities and French troops.
The ICRC did not specify in a statement released Monday what it believed had happened to the workers who were carrying out field work in Abeibara, northern Kidal, and has not yet released their names or nationalities.
Four of them had camped in an area where French forces in the Barkhane anti-terror mission were carrying out operations, the ICRC has previously said.
The team were flagged down in their vehicle "by someone on a motorbike, who told them to follow him," Valery Mbaoh Nana, ICRC spokesman in the Malian capital Bamako, told AFP on Tuesday.
One has since been released, Mbaoh Nana said.
Mbaoh Nana said that according to information that had reached the ICRC, the other three "are being held in acceptable conditions. They are not being tortured, they have not been physically maltreated."
AFP
