Armed men have kidnapped two Chinese employees of a mining company in a volatile area near western Niger's borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, the regional governor said Monday.

"Two Chinese nationals were kidnapped... by armed men in Mbanga" on Sunday night, the governor of the Tillaberi region Tidjani Ibrahim Katiella told AFP.

The "three borders" zone between the Sahel nations is regularly hit by attacks from jihadist groups linked to either al-Qaeda or the Islamic State.

The governor said the identity and number of those behind Sunday's abduction were not known.

He added that the two kidnapped Chinese employees "have a permit to search for gold" and had already received warnings from armed groups to leave the area "but they had refused to go home".

China strengthened its economic ties with Niger in 2006 through uranium, gold and oil exploration.

The last time a Chinese citizen was kidnapped was on July 6, 2007.

An employee of the China Nuclear Engineering and Construction Corporation (CNEC) conducting uranium exploration work in the north was abducted by Tuareg rebel group the Niger Movement for Justice (MNJ).

The MNJ told AFP at the time that the abduction was an "ultimatum to the Chinese companies that cooperate with the Niger army".

He was released after several days of negotiations.

Several other foreign nationals have been kidnapped in Mali in the last decade, including four French citizens in 2010 who were released three years later, and a Germany NGO worker in 2018 in Tillaberi who was never found.

Landlocked Niger faces attacks by the Nigerian jihadist group Boko Haram from the southeast, and IS and al-Qaeda groups from the western border with Mali.

On March 21, several hamlets in the Tahoua region which borders Tillaberi were struck by coordinated attacks that killed 141 people -- the most deadly presumed jihadist assault in Niger in recent years.

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