Nouakchott - Mauritanian security officials on Tuesday said they had located three Spanish aid workers abducted last week, police told the German Press Agency dpa. Military officials had begun negotiations with the hostage-takers, police said.
Mauritanian security forces on Monday launched a massive manhunt for three Spanish aid workers abducted the previous night.
The two Spanish men and a woman were abducted at gunpoint as they were returning to the capital, Nouakchott, from the port city of Nouadhibou, near the border with the Western Sahara. Other members of the convoy managed to escape.
Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said there is strong evidence he Algerian-based al-Qaeda branch known as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were behind the abduction.
