UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's visit, his first since taking office two years ago, comes after a stopover in Afghanistan and two days after unidentified gunmen kidnapped a top UN official in southwest Pakistan.
A senior American official (pictured) working at the UN Refugee Agency in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's south-western province of Baluchistan, was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on Monday, according to local police.
Tuareg rebels in eastern Mali have abducted a group of foreign tourists on the border with Niger. They included two Swiss, one German and a Briton, a senior Malian military officer said.
Spanish photographer Jose Cendon (our picture) and a British unnamed reporter, kidnapped by an unknown group on November 26 in the Gulf of Aden, have been freed according to the police of Puntland, a region in northern Somalia.
Gunmen in speedboats attacked three oil services ships and kidnapped at least two Russians in separate incidents in Nigeria's Niger Delta, near crude oil facilities operated by Canada's Addax Petroleum.
Fighters from the Front des Forces de Redressement, a Tuareg rebel group active in Niger, said in a statement that they are holding a UN special envoy for the region, Canadian Robert Fowler, who went missing on Sunday.
Yemeni tribesmen kidnapped a German couple and their daughter in the Bani Dhabyan region, south of the capital Sanaa Monday. On Tuesday, the Yemeni police surrounded the stronghold where they are believed to be held captive.
Infamous American football star O.J. Simpson was sentenced to 15 years in prison on Friday, for armed robbery and a kidnapping committed in September 2007.
French aid worker Dany Egreteau, who was kidnapped a month ago in the Afghan capital Kabul, has been released and will be flown back home to Paris late Thursday, President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday.
