MADRID (AP) — Spain’s overseas ministry says {that a} Spanish man has been kidnapped in an unspecified northern African nation, whereas Spanish media report that the person is being held by a jihadist group.
Spanish state information company EFE and newspaper El País each report that the person was captured in southern Algeria after which taken into Mali by the Islamic State within the Larger Sahara.
The overseas ministry would neither affirm the small print of the media studies nor reveal the placement of the kidnapping when requested by The Related Press.
Trusted information and each day delights, proper in your inbox
See for your self — The Yodel is the go-to supply for each day information, leisure and feel-good tales.
“Dependable sources affirm {that a} Spanish citizen is presently being held towards his will in northern Africa,” the ministry’s assertion learn. “The federal government is actively working to make clear and resolve the scenario.”
Algerian authorities haven’t but commented on the reported abduction. Kidnappings have hardly ever been reported in Algeria lately, nevertheless a decade in the past, militant teams within the area routinely used kidnapping and ransom to finance their operations.
On Sunday, Austria’s Overseas Ministry stated unnamed gunmen had kidnapped an Austrian support employee in Agadez, Niger, roughly 280 miles (450 kilometers) from the largely porous desert border with Algeria. The ministry stated it had knowledgeable Algeria.
Algeria, Africa’s largest nation by space, has labored to clamp down on instability and terrorism within the huge Sahara, nevertheless the kidnapping comes months after a Swiss tourist traveling in the desert was killed.
