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| Tourists are advised to avoid travelling to the ancient city of Timbuktu |
An armed assemblage of kidnappers has abducted three tourists and asleep a fourth in the city-limits of Timbuktu in arctic Mali, aegis sources said.
Two of the hostages are Dutch and the third a South African who may accept lived in the UK, letters say. The nationalities accept not been confirmed.
The asleep man, said to be German, was attempt asleep aggravating to abide the gang.
It is believed to be the aboriginal time foreigners accept been abducted in Timbuktu, already accepted with tourists.
However, a accumulation affiliated to al-Qaeda has attacked Westerners in adjacent regions.
Following several kidnappings, the UK has warned its citizens not to biking to arctic Mali, including Timbuktu.
On Thursday, two French geologists were kidnapped by an armed assemblage in the eastern apple of Hombori.
Police protection
The Timbuktu gunmen access in as the four were dining in a restaurant on the axial aboveboard of the age-old city.
They ordered the tourists there to chase them, a chump at Amanar restaurant told the Associated Press.
The buyer of a hotel, area the four accept ahead backward during their biking about Mali, told the BBC News website that one of them, a German, had been attempt asleep if he banned to get into the attackers' vehicle.
He said he had been told by colleagues in Timbuktu that all foreigners in the city-limits had been aggregate at the badge address and would be aureate to the capital, Bamako, on Saturday.
The incidents are the latest in a alternation of abductions of foreigners believed to be the plan of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Aqim).
Correspondents say Aqim has bases in the arctic Mali arid from which it organises raids and kidnappings, and traffics weapons and drugs.
French hostages
French soldiers accept abutting Mali's army in the coursing for the French brace kidnapped in Hombori, according to AFP.
The brace were the aboriginal Westerners in Mali to be kidnapped south of the River Niger.
The captives were called as Philippe Verdon and Serge Lazarevic, in abstracts apparent by AFP.
They had been beatific by the aggregation Mande Construction Immobiliere to yield clay samples in the Hombori arena area it planned to body a adhesive factory.
A aegis bouncer at their auberge said that "the kidnappers were armed to the teeth".
"I was angry up and told to point out the apartment of the Frenchmen, whom they atrociously took away," he said.
Al-Qaeda-linked fighters accept in the accomplished brought hostages into arctic Mali from neighbouring countries, such as Niger area four French nationals - still getting captivated - were kidnapped in September 2010.
'High threat'
Huge swathes of the Sahel arena south of the Sahara Arid accept been rendered off-limits to foreigners.
Timbuktu is one of the abounding above day-tripper destinations in Mali that adopted embassies accept accounted too alarming for visitors due to the accident of kidnapping by Aqim.
The UK Adopted Office website says there is a "high blackmail from terrorism" in Mali.
"Terrorists accept been complex in kidnaps in the region, on a amount of occasions arch to the annihilation of the hostages," it said.
"We accept that added kidnap attempts are likely."
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