Four Malians and a Togolese working for a Chinese telecoms firm were kidnapped and murdered while laying fibre-optic cables in central Mali, multiple sources told AFP on Sunday. The group was working a few dozen kilometres (miles) from the town of Niafunke on Friday when they were dragged away by unidentified armed men, a local official based there said.
"The next day they were found dead, their bodies abandoned on the roadside," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity - information confirmed by a Malian security source.
A source with the company, who asked that their identity and that of the workers' employer be protected, told AFP: "We can't keep working without security. All our other workers are in a place of safety." Three Chinese firms currently work on telecoms projects in the region.
Firms have spent two years trying to install fibre-optic cables in central and southern Mali to bring faster internet to the region, but delays have been caused by "insecurity and the rocky nature of the terrain in certain areas", the prime minister's office said earlier this month.
Security in Mali's central belt has deteriorated rapidly in the last few years as a jihadist insurgency and inter-communal clashes have spread downwards from conflicts once confined to the troubled north.
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