Mali kidnappers kill German tourist
Gunmen murdered a German man in Mali’s most famous city and seized three men from the Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden, as officials ordered a plane to evacuate foreigners from the tourist destination.
The Dutch and Swedish governments confirmed yesterday that their citizens had been taken. A fellow traveller said the other man seized was South African and said she met the German man.
Tour guide Ali Maiga, who was with the tourists during Friday’s attack at a Timbuktu restaurant, gave the same list of nationalities. A witness and an official said gunmen burst into the restaurant, grabbed four tourists dining there and killed one when he refused to climb into their truck.
Officials evacuated foreigners from Timbuktu to the capital Bamako, yesterday, said a hotel owner in Bamako where the tourists previously stayed.
The kidnapping comes ahead of an official visit by Mali’s president to the Netherlands next week.
Germany’s Foreign Ministry said yesterday that the murdered man was “with a high probability a German national” and updated its Mali travel advisory to mention the killing.
South African foreign affairs department spokesman Clayson Monyela said his government was trying to confirm whether one of those kidnapped was South African.
Canadian tourist Julie-Ann Leblond said she met a group consisting of a South African, a Swede and a Dutch couple in Mali. She said they invited her to join them as they headed to Timbuktu, but she became ill on Wednesday and had to stay behind.
“I was supposed to go there with them,” Ms Leblond, 25, from Quebec City, said from Bamako. “I was never so happy to get a cold.”
She did not provide the names of the tourists and said the German was travelling separately. She said the group of four met on the road as they were travelling from Europe to Africa.
“They’re incredible people, so peaceful, so nice,” she said. “That kind of thing cannot just happen to those kind of people. It’s crazy.”
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, condemned the attack, saying: “These incidents show the need to continue and intensify the efforts against insecurity in the Sahel (the desert region stretching from Mauritania to Chad).
“Through its Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel, the EU is committed to help the Sahel countries in this endeavour.”
Yesterday France’s Foreign Ministry expanded the zone that it “strongly advises” French travellers to avoid in Mali, moving the line southwards from the Sahel region.
Until a few years ago, Timbuktu was one of the most visited destinations in Africa, but it is now one of the many former tourist hotspots in Mali that have been deemed too dangerous to visit by foreign embassies because of kidnappings by the local chapter of al-Qaida.
Friday’s incident came a day after after two French citizens were grabbed in the middle of the night from their hotel in the Malian town of Hombori. French judicial officials have opened a preliminary investigation into their kidnappings.
Neither kidnapping has yet been claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, whose members have kidnapped and ransomed more than 50 Europeans and Canadians since 2003.
If Friday’s kidnapping is by AQIM, it will mark the first time the group has taken a hostage inside of Timbuktu’s city limits. Thursday’s kidnapping would be another first – the first hostage taking south of the Niger River.
The group’s footprint has grown dramatically since 2006, when the Algerian-led cell first joined al Qaida. Security experts estimate the group has been able to raise around €100m from ransom payments alone.
