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Details of the kidnapping, on the border with Nigeria, were not
immediately clear.
Niger, like much of West Africa's Sahel region, is struggling
with a deepening security crisis as groups with links to al
Qaeda and Islamic State carry out attacks on the army and
civilians, despite help from French and U.S. forces.
Four U.S. soldiers were killed in an ambush there in 2017,
sparking a national debate about America's role fighting
Islamists in the sparsely populated West African desert that is
home to some of the world's poorest countries.
Attacks in Niger, like the one on the U.S. forces, have
generally been restricted to a western zone bordering Mali and
Burkina Faso, but there have been signs of encroachment this
year.
In August, gunmen on motorcycles killed six French aid workers,
a Nigerian guide and a driver in a giraffe reserve just 65 km
(40 miles) from the capital Niamey.
Birnin Konni, where the sources say the U.S. citizen was taken
around 0100 local time (midnight GMT), is a few hundred miles to
the east of that region. It is also hundreds of miles from a
region of south east Niger that has come under attack from Boko
Haram militants based in Nigeria.
Kidnappings in the region are infrequent but not rare. At least
six foreign hostages are being held by Islamist insurgents in
Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Two of these were taken in Niger, including U.S. aid worker
Jeffery Woodke, who has been missing since October 2016, and
Joerg Lange, a German aid worker who was taken in April 2018
from a town near the Malian border.
(Reporting By David Lewis, Moussa Aksar and Boureima Balima;
Writing by Edward McAllister; Editing by Bate Felix and Nick
Macfie)
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