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4 February 2011
Last updated at 05:57 ET
An Italian female tourist has been abducted while travelling in the Algerian Sahara, local media and security sources say.
The woman, 53, was travelling south of the city of Djanet, close to the borders with Niger and Libya, Algerian newspaper Echorouk reports.
She has probably been taken by her captors into Niger, it says.
An Algerian security source told AFP news agency the woman had been travelling with a driver and a guide.
She arrived in the country on 20 January for a month-long holiday, Echorouk adds.
There was no suggestion that the abduction was linked to recent anti-government unrest in Algeria.
Nor was there any immediate claim of responsibility but it comes in a region where the kidnapping of foreign nationals has caused increasing alarm.
Last year, Algeria, Niger and fellow Sahara states Mauritania and Mali set up a joint military headquarters in the south of Algeria to improve co-ordination in combating one of the most powerful militant groups in the region, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).
The group, which emerged in 2007 from an Algerian militant group, carries out kidnappings for ransom or to demand the release of prisoners as part of its activities.
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The woman, 53, was travelling south of the city of Djanet, close to the borders with Niger and Libya, Algerian newspaper Echorouk reports.
She has probably been taken by her captors into Niger, it says.
An Algerian security source told AFP news agency the woman had been travelling with a driver and a guide.
She arrived in the country on 20 January for a month-long holiday, Echorouk adds.
There was no suggestion that the abduction was linked to recent anti-government unrest in Algeria.
Nor was there any immediate claim of responsibility but it comes in a region where the kidnapping of foreign nationals has caused increasing alarm.
Last year, Algeria, Niger and fellow Sahara states Mauritania and Mali set up a joint military headquarters in the south of Algeria to improve co-ordination in combating one of the most powerful militant groups in the region, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb (AQIM).
The group, which emerged in 2007 from an Algerian militant group, carries out kidnappings for ransom or to demand the release of prisoners as part of its activities.
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