“French authorities striving to get into contact with AQIM for release of kidnapped westerners”, Gérard Longuet

Al-Qaeda's North African wing has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of two French citizens and three other Europeans in Mali last month. “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (Aqim) on Friday released what it said were two photographs of the five Westerners.

• Al-Qaeda’s North African wing has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of two French citizens and three other Europeans in Mali last month. “Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb” (Aqim) on Friday released what it said were two photographs of the five Westerners.
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• The Mauritanian news agency ANI, which has carried statements from Aqim in the past, said the group released the pictures to support a statement issued a day earlier in which it claimed responsibility for the abductions.

• One photo shows two of the hostages, French nationals Serge Lazarevic and Philippe Verdon, with three armed men behind them.

• The other shows the three others being held – a Briton, a Swede and a Dutch national – surrounded by four armed men.
• All the armed men’s faces are covered by turbans.

• On Thursday, Aqim sent a statement to ANI and AFP’s Rabat office, accusing the two French nationals of working for the French intelligence service.

• “We will soon make our demands known to France and Mali,” it added.

• The French defense minister Mr Gérard Longuet told reporters Sunday outside the 5+5 ministerial meeting in Nouakchott that France was striving to get into contact with the Aqim kidnappers for a deal on the safe release of the two Frenchmen and the three Europeans now being held somewhere in the sub-sahara region.

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•  Lazarevic and Verdon were seized at gunpoint from their hotel in the town of Hombori near the border with Niger on 24 November.

• The next day gunmen snatched a Swede, a Dutchman and a man with dual British-South African nationality from a restaurant on Timbuktu’s central square.