Mali's government said on Thursday that leading opposition figure Soumaila Cisse had been kidnapped in the country's volatile central region, just days before a long-delayed parliamentary poll. In an unprecedented first for a Malian politician of his rank, unidentified gunmen kidnapped Cisse and his team on Wednesday afternoon, his party said.
The Union for the Republic and Democracy (URD) party sounded the alarm later on Wednesday after Cisse failed to turn up to an appointment and was no longer answering his phone. Cisse is a former finance minister and has run for the presidency three times. The circumstances of his disappearance remain unclear, but the government and URD members have said it was a kidnapping.
On Thursday morning, URD spokesman Demba Traore told reporters that Cisse was travelling with a group of 12 people on two jeeps when unidentified gunmen took them. Five people were freed on Thursday morning, he said, adding that two from the freed group were wounded. One later died. "During the kidnap, there was shooting," he said, explaining that Cisse's bodyguard had been hit.
"Unfortunately, he couldn't survive his injuries and passed away," Traore said. One of the people who was freed, who declined to be named, said the group was nearing its rendez-vous point when it was set upon. "People on motorbikes fired at us. I think they were jihadists," he said.
Mali has been struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency that erupted in the north in 2012 and has claimed thousands of lives. Despite the presence of thousands of French and UN troops, the conflict in Mali has engulfed the centre of the country and spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.