Unidentified armed men kidnapped humanitarians from the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Malian Red Cross yesterday Sunday at around 7 pm in the Tenenkou circle of the Mopti region.
Contacted by Sahelien.com, the ICRC said that four humanitarians were kidnapped.
The team was « on site as part of the assessment of the humanitarian situation when unidentified armed individuals forced them to follow them », the humanitarian aid agency said on its Facebook page.
« We are extremely worried for our colleagues. We are doing everything we can to understand what happened and to get them released unharmed, as quickly and unconditionally as possible », said Jean-Nicolas Marti, head of the ICRC delegation in Mali.
This is the first time that Red Cross workers have been abducted in the center of the country.
In April 2016, three ICRC staff members were abducted in the Kidal region before being released a few days later.
Two years earlier, four members of the institution were abducted in the same area and released two months later.