it had asked local authorities in Niger's capital, Niamey, to give "absolute priority" to resolving the kidnapping but asked that they avoid "any initiative that could put Father Maccalli at risk."

Burkina Faso's border with Niger and Mali is home to extremists who kidnap and kill officials, sometimes in connection with other Islamic extremist groups in West Africa's vast Sahel region. Attacks have risen in the past year as young men frustrated by poverty become radicalized.

Niger for years has fought extremist groups linked to both al-Qaida and the Islamic State organization. Recently it has experienced a rise in kidnappings with ransom demands.

Earlier this month in the Diffa region, a 70-year-old woman who was the mother of a national deputy was abducted by armed men on motorcycles. The kidnappers demandedEnergy Research Scientific Computing Center, which is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. Observations obtained with the Samuel Oschin Telescope at the Palomar Observatory as part of the Palomar Transient Factory project, a scientific collaboration between the California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Las Cumbres Observatory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, the University of Oxford, and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The William Herschel Telescope is operated on the island of La Palma by the Isaac Newton Group in the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias. Based on observations obtained at the Gemini Observatory, which is operated by the Association of Universities for