French civil engineering company Vinci and nuclear energy group Areva have said seven of their employees have been kidnapped in northern Niger.
The group, which reportedly includes five French citizens, was seized near the town of Arlit in the Sahara desert.
Areva operates a uranium mine in the area. A subsidiary of Vinci, Sogea-Satom, is a subcontractor there.
A spokesman for the French foreign ministry said it was doing everything it could to confirm the reports.
“We have received a report on the possible kidnapping of a group of people, some of them French, in Niger,” Bernard Valero told the AFP news agency.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, an offshoot of the Islamist militant group, is active in the region and has kidnapped French and other European nationals in the past.
In July, the group said it had executed a 78-year-old French citizen it was holding hostage in Mali after a cross-border raid by the French and Mauritanian armed forces failed to free him.
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