Al-Qaeda group extends deadline for Austrian hostages

0 Comments | AFP, March, 2008

VIENNA (AFP) — Austria vowed Monday to press on with efforts to free two nationals seized by an Al-Qaeda group in north Africa, while the kidnappers were said to have extended a deal-making deadline into next month.

"It is an additional extension of two weeks that will expire on Sunday, April 6, 2008, at midnight," the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Islamic Maghreb said in a message posted on militant websites and picked up by the US-based monitoring group SITE Intelligence.

When this "final" extension expires, "we will have exhausted what we could bear. Let Austria, Tunisia and Algeria be responsible for the lives of the kidnapped," the message said.

The group also repeated its original demand that a number of Islamists imprisoned in Algeria and Tunisia be...