French investigators to go to Mali to investigate journalists’ killings

French investigators have been sent to Mali to look into the killing of two journalists last weekend.

The bodies of the two journalists, Claude Verlon and Ghislaine Dupont, both working at RFI, have been brought back to Paris, French foreign minister Laurent Fabius said today.

Verlon and Dupont were kidnapped on November 2nd in Kidal, 1,500km northeast of Bamako, by an unidentified armed group.

The journalists were shot and their bodies found a few meters from a locked car.

The identity of the killers has not been determined yet, Mr Fabius said. Violence in northern Mali surged in September after ethnic Touareg rebels, known as the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad, backed out of a peace agreement with the government.

French president Francois Hollande sent troops in January to prevent militant groups, including some Islamist insurgents, from taking control of the country, Africa's third- largest gold producer.

Bloomberg