Gunmen in Somalia kidnap aid workers

Security forces on Wednesday pursued and surrounded kidnappers who abducted two foreign aid workers in northern Somalia hours earlier, a regional official said.

The kidnapped women, a doctor from Spain and a nurse from Argentina, were seized by six gunmen near the building where they worked for the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres — or Doctors Without Borders — in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia, officials said.

"The kidnappers are holed up in a mountainous area," said a Puntland security official who asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to the media. The official said the kidnappers were surrounded.

"The kidnappers are negotiating to try and secure their own freedom," said Medecins Sans Frontieres spokesman Roger Pek, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from Barcelona, Spain.

Puntland is known as a staging post for human traffickers running boats into Yemen, and piracy is rampant off its coast. A French journalist, Gwen Le Gouil, was kidnapped in the same region on Dec. 16, but he was released after eight days. Le Gouil's kidnappers had demanded about $70,000 in ransom, but police said it was not paid.

Regional authorities confirmed the latest kidnapping. Puntland Trade Minister Abdisamad Yusuf Mohamed Abwan earlier said two suspects were captured, but that they did not have the women.

"We have captured two kidnappers and their car and we are chasing the others," he had said. "There was no exchange of gunfire."

Susan Sandars,a regional spokeswoman based in Kenya for Medecins Sans Frontieres, identified the abducted staffers as Mercedes Garcia, a Spanish doctor, and Pilar Bauza, an Argentine nurse.

"Six gunmen armed with AK-47s blocked a minibus carrying the female aid workers, then they impounded their mobile phones and ordered the driver and a translator to go away," said Sahro Sheik Muse, who lives near the group's building in Puntland and said she saw the incident.

Puntland is about 930 miles north of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, which is at the center of an Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year.

The United Nations says Somalia is facing Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.

Associated Press

 

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