Al-Qaeda kidnaps Algerian governor

Al-Qaeda’s North African branch has kidnaped the governor of an Algerian desert region kidnapped from a town near the border with Libya after he had travelled there to diffuse a youth protest, the interior ministry and local officials said Tuesday Mohamed el-Aid Khelfi, the top security official for the Sahara desert region of Illizi, was abducted on Monday “by three young Algerians, who were armed and have been identified,” the ministry said in a statement sent to the official APS news agency. “All arrangements have been put in place and the appropriate resources have been mobilized at all levels to ensure the governor is freed as quickly as possible,” the statement said. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. But two Algerian security officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the governor was being held by al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), a group which stages ambushes, suicide bombings and kidnappings in Algeria and neighboring countries that straddle the Sahara desert. “The governor is in the hands of AQIM, who have already contacted his parents,” said one of the officials. His car was found near the site of his abduction in the southeastern town of Debdeb, it added. Khelfi was able to contact his family by telephone on Monday but could not reveal where he was located, officials said. The abduction of the governor, the most senior Algerian official to be kidnapped in years, will reinforce worries that the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi has created a zone of instability now being exploited by al-Qaeda. One of the officials said the governor was being held inside Libyan territory a short distance from the spot where he was kidnapped. There was no immediate comment from Libya’s government. “This is a very dangerous escalation which shows that the group (AQIM) is feeling secure and strong because of the chaos in Libya,” said Samer Riad, a security expert who runs Algeria’s numidianews.com news portal. Algeria has been fighting an Islamist insurgency for two decades. High-ranking officials have been assassinated but never before kidnapped, mainly because they are almost always escorted by heavily armed security details. Algeria’s government has in the past months raised concerns - shared by some Western powers - that the security vacuum in Libya left by Gaddafi’s overthrow will provide AQIM with a ready source of weapons and a safe haven from which to launch attacks.