Authorities say a Colombian working with the Catholic church in southern Mali has been abducted in the latest kidnapping to strike the vast Sahel region. There has been no official claim of responsibility for the attack, which took place in the village of Karangana. Traore said the kidnappers could have crossed over from Burkina Faso, where extremists still hold an Australian doctor hostage. Other recent Western hostages taken include a French-Swiss woman who was living in northern Mali and an American who had long worked in Niger. The Burkina Faso-Mali border region has been increasingly unstable in the last several years.

Source: ABC News February 08, 2017 17:37 UTC