The shock coordinated assaults last month by the Al-Qaeda-linked Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) and the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), an ethnic Tuareg separatist movement, plunged the west African nation into a security crisis.

Strategic towns, including Kidal in the desert north, and Kati, a garrison town near the capital Bamako, were targeted in the April 25 and 26 offensive.

Kidal and other towns and villages in the north were captured and are now under the control of the jihadists and FLA.

Defence Minister Sadio Camara, the 47-year-old architect of the ruling junta's military alliance with Russia, was killed by a car bomb at his residence.

At least 23 people were killed in the fighting, according to a hospital source.

Verifying the number or identity of those detained or kidnapped is difficult in the vast Sahel country, which has been under military leadership since a 2020 coup.

Opposition figures Mountaga Tall, Youssouf Daba Diawara and Moussa Djire are among those "abducted", security sources and their allies told AFP.

Tall, a lawyer, was taken on May 2 in Bamako by hooded men, his family said.

He is accused of plotting with opposition figures in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, to overthrow the military government, a security source said.

An intelligence services source confirmed the information.

Since his arrest, Tall has been questioned at least once for "attempted destabilisation", sources close to the matter said.

Meanwhile, security sources said that Diawara and Djire were suspected of links with, respectively, the influential imam Mahmoud Dicko and Oumar Mariko, two opposition figures in exile.

At least two other civilians who are close to Mariko were also arrested following the attacks, a judicial source told AFP, without giving further details.

The military prosecutor's office said on May 1 that it had "solid evidence" of the "complicity" of certain military personnel, accusing them of helping with the "planning, coordination and execution" of the attacks.

"Everything suggests that these events are being used as an opportunity to carry out a purge within the political opposition and the army," a political official told AFP, requesting anonymity for security reasons.

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