Key Mali opposition leader abducted during campaign

Bloomberg

Gunmen abducted Soumaila Cisse, the leader of Mali’s main opposition party, and members of his campaign team days before parliamentary polls.
Cisse and his team were attacked as they campaigned for the vote on Sunday near the candidate’s hometown of Niafunke in the north of the country, his Union for the Republic and Democracy said.
A party official on March 28 confirmed that Cisse and several members of his 11-person delegation had been kidnapped. Five of them were found and Cisse’s bodyguard had been killed, Gouagnon Coulibaly said by phone from Bamako, the capital.
Cisse, a former finance minister who has run for president three times, lost a run-off vote to President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in 2018. He and his team were expected near the town of Koumaira but never showed up, according to the statement. They were no longer reachable by phone.
Mali is struggling to contain an insurgency that started in the north in 2012 and has spread south and into neighbouring countries. Groups affiliated with al-Qaeda are active in the area where Cisse and his staff disappeared.

No group has so far taken responsibility for the kidnapping.
Mali’s government in a statement Thursday said it had taken “all practical measures” to find the missing politician.