Freed European Hostages Evacuated from Mali to Burkina Faso

Three European aid workers released in Mali after being kidnapped by an al-Qaida-linked jihadist group were on Thursday "safe and sound" in neighboring Burkina Faso, a negotiator said.

"We are in Gorom-Gorom (a town in northern Burkina Faso). We have all the hostages," the negotiator said, adding that the two Spaniards and one Italian snatched in Algeria in October 2011 were "safe and sound... everyone is well".

The group would arrive in Ouagadougou later in the day.

A leader of the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) on Wednesday announced the hostages' release.

He said a ransom had been paid for the three -- a Spanish man and woman, Enric Gonyalons and Ainhoa Fernandez Rincon, and an Italian woman, Rossella Urru.

The hostages were abducted from a Sahrawi refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria. Sahrawis are people from the disputed Western Saharan territory that abuts Morocco, Mauritania and Algeria.

The previously unknown group MUJAO claimed responsibility, presenting themselves as an offshoot of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM).