Red Cross Restricts Travel in North Mali after Jihadist Attack

The international Red Cross said Tuesday it has ordered staff in northern Mali not to travel out of urban centers after jihadists killed an aid worker in the restive area.

"We have decided to temporarily suspend all our movements in northern Mali, while we wait to understand this incident more clearly," International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Valery Mbaoh Nana told AFP.

"We will take our time to analyze and understand why the ICRC was targeted by such an attack, and we will then determine the consequences," he added.

Gunmen near the northern city of Gao opened fire on Monday against a truck clearly marked with the Red Cross emblem, killing the driver -- a married father of four -- and wounding a Malian Red Cross worker.

The two men were on a mission to resupply Gao hospital with much-needed medical equipment, the ICRC said.

The extremist MUJAO group (the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa) claimed responsibility for the attack.

"We have achieved what we wanted with this attack," MUJAO Spokesman Abou Walid Sahraoui told AFP by phone.

The MUJAO was one of a number of Islamist militia groups that controlled northern Mali for nearly a year before they were routed and pushed north into the Sahara desert by a French-led offensive in 2013.

An African military source with the U.N. mission MINUSMA said the attack had been "carefully planned."

"It was carried out by at least six terrorists. Shots were fired," the source said.

MINUSMA condemned the attack and called on the Malian authorities to identify the culprits and bring them to justice.

Divided into rival armed factions, plagued by drug trafficking and infiltrated by jihadist groups, Mali's desert north has struggled for stability since the west African nation gained independence in 1960.