Two journalists with French radio station RFI have been shot dead by gunmen in Mali.<br /><br />Claude Verlon and Ghislaine Dupont had just finished interviewing a local official with the MNLA Tuareg separatist group on Saturday morning in Kidal in the north of Mali. They were seized and taken at gunpoint in a 4×4 vehicle. Their bodies, which had been shot several times, were later found outside the town. <br /><br />Marie Christine Saragosse, CEO of France Médias Monde which owns RFI, said she hoped their deaths wouldn’t stop journalists going into dangerous places.<br /><br />“With regard to this kind of barbarity, we can’t have a bodyguard for every journalist, so what’s being put into question is giving a voice to those on the ground. Which was our goal here. This is a barbaric killing. What can we do when faced with this kind of barbarity? Stop going to certain places, stop providing information? I want to say no,” she said.<br /><br />Kidal was the scene of a Tuareg uprising last year that plunged Mali into chaos, leading to a coup and Al Qaeda-linked militants occupying the north of the country.<br /><br />A French-led military intervention drove them out but the area is still highly unstable with pockets of insurgents.<br /><br />The French foreign ministry has said it would work with local authorities to establish the circumstances around the deaths.
