A leading Islamist militant group has abducted a group of Red Cross workers in northern Mali, according to an official from the jihadist group.
The members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) "are alive and in good health" in the hands of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a Mujao official told AFP.
The Mujao is one of the groups allied to al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb that occupied the north of Mali in 2012, before they were partially driven out by French-led military intervention launched in January last year.
"Thanks to God we seized a 4X4 vehicle of the enemies of Islam with their accomplices," the official, Yoro Abdoulsalam, said. He gave no other details.
An ICRC spokesman, Alexis Heeb, confirmed that four members of staff as well as a vet from another aid organisation disappeared on Saturday, along with their vehicle, on the road between Kidal and Gao. All five are Malians .
"We are extremely worried about the fate of our colleagues," Christoph Luedi, head of the ICRC delegation in Mali, said. "We're doing everything we can to locate them as quickly as possible. They were on the way from Kidal to their base in Gao. We don't know yet in what circumstances contact was lost. It's important not to speculate about what might have happened, although no possibility has been ruled out."
For security reasons, ICRC teams make contact every few hours with their base when they are on a mission, and the missing team had done so for part of its journey.
ICRC operations in Mali range from visiting prisoners of war to providing aid to the hundreds of thousands of people displaced by fighting.
Mali descended into chaos when Tuareg rebels and Islamist groups took over the north after a military coup in March 2012. The Islamists later routed the Tuareg, who made a comeback after the French intervention.
The humanitarian crisis triggered by the conflict follows years of drought in the Sahel region that have left 800,000 Malians relying on food aid.
The Islamists started an advance on the capital, Bamako, which led to a military intervention by France, the former the colonial power, in January 2013. French troops drove the al-Qaida-linked militants out of northern towns early last year and have maintained operations against residual groups of insurgents.
France is winding down its force from a peak of about 5,000 soldiers but plans to keep 1,000 troops in Mali beyond spring.
The abduction claim comes amid rising tensions in the Gao region.