An Italian couple feared kidnapped while travelling in southeast Mauritania appear to have disappeared in the same way as three Spaniards whose abduction has been claimed by an Al-Qaeda-linked group, witnesses and observers said yesterday.
An Italian man in his 60s and his Burkina Faso-born wife, in her late 30s, have been missing since Friday night when their minibus was found empty and riddled with bullet holes, a Mauritanian security official said on Saturday, adding that it was "highly likely that they were kidnapped by an armed group".
But so far Mauritanian authorities have not confirmed a kidnapping, while the Italian Foreign Ministry said yesterday that "all diplomatic and political channels are being used" to discover what happened to the couple.
According to Italian media, the missing couple are Sergio Cicala, 65, a retired Sicilian, and his wife, Philomene Kabouree, 39, who had left for Africa late last month to visit her 12-year-old son in Burkina Faso.
Their disappearance comes three weeks after three Spaniards were abducted in the desert region - the latest in a string of Al-Qaeda-claimed kidnappings in the vast Sahara country since 2007.
Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has said it is holding the trio, along with a Frenchman kidnapped across the border in Mali in November, at an unknown location in the Sahara.
Observers in Mauritania say there are similarities with the Italian couple's disappearance.
According to witness reports from travellers gathered by a source close to the local authorities, the attackers descended on the Italians' minibus at night, firing into the air and at the vehicle's tires forcing it to stop. They took the couple away, leaving behind the vehicle and its contents.
"The mode of operation is practically the same as that for the kidnapping of the three Spaniards on November 29, which makes one think that it is the same terrorist group," the publisher of the newspaper Nouakchott-infos, Abou Al Maali, said yesterday.
"Kidnapping has become a lucrative business since Europeans began paying a lot for the lives of their hostages," he said.
Over the past two years, AQIM has claimed a series of deadly acts in Mauritania, including the killing in late 2006 of four French nationals and of an American in June in the capital Nouakchott.
Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, elected President in July after having led a coup in 2008, has promised a "fight to the finish" against terrorism.
Earlier this month the former general declared that the recent spat of operations by AQIM came about because of "numerous security and military errors by previous regimes".
The President has promised to better equip the army but added that it could not be accomplished "in a day".
Meanwhile, the opposition in Mauritania has organised a march for Wednesday to protest against what it called the "growing insecurity" in the Saharan Africa country.