BAMAKO: France warned citizens yesterday against travelling to Mali after a Portuguese-born Frenchman was kidnapped by armed men in the restive country’s west, as the international community takes steps to reclaim the Islamist-occupied north.
“We will do everything we can to find our citizen,” French President Francois Hollande said. Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius urged French citizens to avoid the western Mali “where they will put their lives and safety in danger”.
The Frenchman, identified earlier as 61-year-old Jules Berto Rodriguez Leal by a Malian security source, was abducted on Tuesday evening in the town of Diema in the Kayes region after entering the country by car from neighbouring Mauritania.
The Mauritanian Information Agency said Leal had crossed into Mali via a border post at Gogui, and a security source said that there were seven kidnappers.
About four years ago, an Italian-Burkinabe couple was kidnapped in the same region by the north African branch of Al Qaeda, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), then freed months later in exchange for a ransom. AFP
