MOSCOW, March 23 (RIA Novosti) - Interpol Russia has joined a hunt to find a three-year-old girl, snatched from her father in France allegedly by her Russian mother, in what is believed to be part of an ongoing custody row, an Interpol spokesperson said on Monday.

French police are focusing the international hunt on the whereabouts of the girl's mother Irina Belenkaya, who is alleged, along with two accomplices, to have taken the child from her father Jean-Michel Andre on Friday in Arles, in southern France, in what has been described as a violent attack.

"We have received official notification from our French colleagues of the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the girl. Interpol Russia will act upon the search warrant strictly according to Russian legislation," Tatyana Trunayeva said.

"If the girl is found at her mother's place in Russia, the French police will be informed," she added.

It is the third time Elise Andre has been kidnapped in the long-running custody row between the couple. French courts awarded her father custody of Elise in 2007 when he divorced Belenkaya, who left France taking her daughter with her.

In 2008, Andre, 51, hired private detectives to trace his daughter and then abducted the girl from Belenkaya's Moscow flat. He then secured custody rights for his daughter through a French court.

However, Belenkaya was also awarded custody of her daughter by a Russian court and an arrest warrant has been issued for Andre for the 2008 abduction of Elise.