An armed man and woman seized the 21-year-old Turkish woman in a street in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, north of Paris, and bundled her into a car on December 7, according to witness accounts.

An hour later her family received a telephone call from a man suggesting that he belonged to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is waging an armed campaign for self-rule in Turkey's southeast, officials said.

According to Le Parisien newspaper, the man said he kidnapped the young woman, whose first name it gave as Cemile, to force her into doing military service for the PKK.

No ransom demand has so far been received by the victim's family.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by much of the international community, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 44,000 lives.