Wüstenschiff

Kidnapped in Algeria on October 22, 2011, Italian aid worker Rossella Urru was released yesterday in Bamako, Mali [...] According to African press indiscretions the Italian was released in exchange for the release of Abderrahmane Ould Amadou al-Azawad, an AQIM militiaman.

An Al-Qaeda splinter group wants 30 million euros ($39 million) to free three European aid workers kidnapped in Algeria in October, a Malian source close to the mediators said on Saturday. "The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa is demanding 30 million euros to free two Spanish nationals and the Italian woman," the source said [...] The group on Saturday claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a police base in southern Algeria which left 23 people wounded according to the paramilitary gendarmerie. One of them was in serious condition.

An Al-Qaeda splinter group wants a total of 45 million euros ($59 million) in ransoms for two European women aid workers and seven Algerian diplomats taken hostage, the group's spokesman said Wednesday [...] The two women, an Italian and a Spaniard, were kidnapped in October along with a Spanish man while working in a camp for Western Sahara refugees in Tindouf in western Algeria.

A west African Al-Qaeda splinter group on Wednesday threatened to kill a Spanish hostage kidnapped in western Algeria last year if their demands are not met, a spokesman said. "Spain is postponing every round of negotiations to answer our demands, and this is going to put the life of hostage Enrico Gonyalons to an end," said Adnan Abu Walid Sahraoui, spokesman for the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO. MUJAO first emerged last December, presenting themselves as an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, when they claimed the kidnap three months earlier of three aid workers -- two Spanish, one a woman, and an Italian -- from Tindouf, Algeria.

An Italian and two Spanish hostages were freed in northern Mali on Wednesday by the al Qaeda-linked MUJWA Islamist group, the Spanish government said on Wednesday. The three aid workers were seized in a refugee camp near Tindouf, Algeria, last October [...] Ainhoa Fernandez and Enric Gonyalons had been freed but had not been handed over yet due to storms in the area. A Spanish plane would fly to the area in the coming hours to bring them back home. The spokesman also confirmed the release of Italian aid worker Rossella Urru. Earlier a member of Ansar Dine, another Islamist group operating in the region, said he believed the trio were in the hands of mediators from Burkina Faso [...] Mauritania's ANI news agency reported on its website http://www.ani.mr that Mamne Ould Oufkir, who had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in the kidnapping was freed overnight.

''We were told that an Italian and two Spanish hostages have been freed today in the Gao region in northern Mali ...

The Islamist rebel group that freed three European hostages in north Mali this week claimed Friday that they received a ransom of (EURO)15 million ($18.4 million) and the liberation of two imprisoned group members in exchange. Adnan Abu Elwalid Sahraoui of the jihadist group Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, known as MUJAO, said the group had no more Western hostages, but threatened to stage more kidnappings in the Sahel region. "We will take them as soon as they enter the territories of Mauritania, Mali, Algeria or Niger," he said.