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Search for troops intensifies
29/08/2007 21:10 - (SA)
Bamako - Mali's military command has deployed more troops to three northern regions to find fellow soldiers kidnapped by Tuareg rebels in two attacks this week, a defence ministry official said on Wednesday.
"We've sent patrols to the Tombouctou, Gao and Kidal regions, to find the hostages and equipment seized by a group of armed bandits," said the official, without giving numbers and asking not to be named.
Military and local official sources have identified the attackers as armed dissident Tuareg desert people loyal to Ibrahim Ag Bahanga, who has rejected a peace deal signed in July 2006 between Tuaregs and the government.
The official confirmed on Wednesday that an undisclosed number of soldiers were seized on Monday when rebels ambushed a convoy in the northeast of Mali and made off with three military vehicles and food supplies.
'Nomadic Berber people'
The previous day, 23 soldiers were kidnapped, with eight later freed, when rebels swooped down on a group near Tedjerete escorting agro-science workers in the region to deal with a locust threat.
One of the released soldiers on Tuesday said that Bahanga had controlled the raid from a few kilometres distance, communicating by satellite phone with his men, who headed off towards the border with Niger.
"What I can tell you is that we have sent the troops necessary to carry out the mission," the ministry official said on Wednesday, while a diplomatic source said Mali had asked both Algeria and Niger to help.
Niger and Mali, two deeply poor nations whose northern borders with Algeria are deep in the Sahara, have already agreed to a right of pursuit across their desert frontiers for armed Tuaregs.
Mali security officials say Bahanga has linked up with other Tuareg rebels in Niger. His father-in-law Hama Ag Sidahmed has also broken with other former rebels and formed alliances.
The Tuaregs have for centuries been a nomadic Berber people who have lived in the deep Sahara. In their dealings with governments of the now independent states of Sahel Africa, they demand efforts to develop their regions.
In Niger, where a Tuareg insurgency resumed in February, their leaders also want a share in the revenue from uranium, which is mined in the north and one of the very few foreign sources of income available to Sahel nations.
- SAPA
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