Algerian troops have crossed into Mali to help government forces combat groups affiliated to al-Qaida, officials and witnesses told Agence France Presse Tuesday.

"Algerian troops are currently stationed in northern Mali to assist the Malian army in the fight against terrorism," a high-ranking military official said.

Authorities on Saturday evacuated all tourists from the ancient city of Timbuktu in northern Mali, a day after three foreigners were kidnapped and another killed, an airport official said.

The 20 or so tourists were flown by government-chartered aircraft to Mopti, south of Timbuktu, and to the capital Bamako.

An armed gang of kidnappers abducted three Europeans and killed a fourth in the Timbuktu region of northern Mali, security sources said on Friday.

The victim who was shot dead had tried to resist his abduction, according to the sources who did not give the nationality of the hostages.

French soldiers joined the Mali army Friday in the hunt for two French geologists who were kidnapped by an armed gang this week, an Agence France Presse journalist reported.

The two hostages were seized from their hotel in the eastern village of Hombori near the border with Niger early Thursday, in an assault bearing the hallmark of al-Qaida linked Islamist militants.

A gang of armed men kidnapped two French nationals from their hotel in northeastern Mali overnight, local security sources told Agence France Presse on Thursday.

The two geologists were seized by seven men from their hotel in the village of Hombori, the sources said, in the latest abduction of foreigners in the restive country where al-Qaida militants are active.

The arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son Seif al-Islam is just a matter of time, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said Wednesday.

"The question is not if he will be arrested, it's when," Moreno-Ocampo told a press conference at the court's headquarters in The Hague.

A man and woman in Mali were arrested on Tuesday and charged with “human trafficking” mainly of young women, police sources in Mali told Agence France Presse.

The trafficking was occurring between Lebanon and Mali, the source added.

Mali's most radical Tuareg rebel chief, who never agreed to disarm, died in an accident late Friday, his family said, but observers suggested the death could be linked to the unfolding chaos in Libya.

Ibrahim Ag Bahanga never totally joined in north Mali's peace process that resulted from a 2006 accord between the Malian government and Tuareg rebels, who have been fighting sporadically since the 1990s.