Police in Mali have detained no fewer than 20 suspected Islamist militants in recent days, including two French citizens.
Security sources said on Wednesday that among those detained was the organiser of an attack a restaurant in Bamako in March.
Police arrested a man identified as Saouty Kouma in the central Malian town of Melo whom they suspected was behind the assault on La Terrasse restaurant.
The attack which was claimed by Islamist militant group al-Mourabitoun killed a French citizen, a Belgian security officer and three Malians.
The remaining men were detained on Monday in the southern town of Zegoua after crossing over from neighbouring Ivory Coast.
“They were transported to Bamako on Tuesday for questioning,’’ the sources said.
One of the security sources said that most of the men detained on Monday were from Mauritania, with the remainder Malians and French.
“They are 20 presumed jihadists, including two French, they are all Islamists, all bearded,’’ a second source said.
The men were detained alongside two members of Islamist group Ansar Dine who were captured by the army in central Mali on Thursday with evidence linking them to planned attacks.
No further details were immediately available.
A French Embassy spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Ansar Dine was part of an alliance of Islamist fighters that seized Mali’s desert north after a Tuareg uprising in 2012 but was ousted by a French military operation a year later.
The group claimed responsibility for a series of recent attacks across Mali’s south and west, including in Bamako, which was previously deemed safe from such violence.
Armed separatist groups and the Malian government signed a peace agreement in June designed to stop uprisings in the north, but Ansar Dine was not a signatory.