MARSEILLE: Police in the French southern port city of Marseille launched a massive manhunt Sunday after a two-year-old boy was kidnapped.
The child named Osnachi was described by authorities as of African appearance, dressed in a light blue polka dot shirt, off-white trousers and black and white sneakers with a silver necklace.
He has brown eyes with black frizzy hair and a shaved stripe on each side of his head.
Police said the kidnapper was white and around 35 years old. He was 1.8m tall, very thin and unshaven.
The child was snatched at around 12.40pm in the city’s Canebiere area.
The so-called ‘abduction alert’ system in France was inspired by the Amber Alert child abduction system set up in the United States in 1996 after the kidnap and murder of a nine-year-old girl in Texas.
The French system has been used more than 20 times since it was established in 2006, and all the children were found safe and sound, all but two of them very quickly.
The last time it was triggered was in January when a father abducted his critically sick baby from a children’s hospital in the southern city of Toulouse.
The child was found 24 hours after being kidnapped and said to be in a good condition.
The 33-year-old unemployed father and his elder brother were arrested. - AFP
