A Swiss woman was kidnapped overnight from a house in the northern Mali city of Timbuktu, a spokesman for the Malian army, Souleymane Maiga told Reuters on Friday.
He gave no details of the incident or the woman’s identity, but a resident of the city said the victim was a Swiss missionary who had already been kidnapped once before.
“I confirm that a European woman was kidnapped in Timbuktu at 3.30 a.m. (0330 GMT). A neighbour alerted the security forces around 6 a.m.,” he said, later adding that she was Swiss.
In 2012, Islamist fighters in northern Mali kidnapped Beatrice Stockly, a Swiss woman working as a missionary in Timbuktu, and released her days later. A resident of Timbuktu who knows Stockly told Reuters it was she who was kidnapped overnight.
