NAIROBI, KENYA (AP) - About 25 gunmen traveling in two trucks kidnapped two foreign aid workers in central Somalia on Sunday, an aid worker said.
The Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) workers were held while their Somali staff members were released, the aid worker said. One of the hostages is European and the nationality of the other is not known. The aid worker spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
“We’re lost contact with some members of staff,” said Tom Quinn, the agency’s head of mission for Somalia. “Investigations are ongoing.”
Such attacks on aid workers have long been common in lawless Somalia, often motivated by kidnappers demanding ransoms. There is no indication that such kidnappings are linked to a recent surge in piracy off Somalia. But the lucrative ransoms that some of the pirates in the Horn of Africa have earned from ship owners may have emphasized the value of foreigners as hostages in a country where nearly half the population is dependent on foreign aid.
Still, not all attacks on aid workers are financially motivated. Some are political: the government has accused them of helping insurgents and the insurgents have accused them of being spies. According to the U.N., a total of 35 aid workers were killed in Somalia in 2008 and 26 abducted.
Bakool region, where the two Medecins Sans Frontieres workers were seized Sunday, is under the control of an Islamist militia that is fighting Somalia’s weak U.N.-backed government.
The nation has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew a dictator in 1991. The coup sparked a series of clan-based clashes and the country has been riven between competing militias ever since.
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