3 aid workers kidnapped in Somalia,Security official says gunmen kidnapped 3 foreign aide workers in Kenya, took them to Somalia

Somali gunmen kidnapped three foreign aid workers on Saturday in a raid on a Kenyan border town, the latest attack on relief workers, an official and Somali residents said."The authorities in Mandera [in Kenya] told us that those aid workers had been kidnapped. We're now going to run after them," Sheikh Osman, an al Shabaab official in the neighbouring district in Somalia, said.The nationalities of the aid workers and the organisation for which they were working were not immediately clear.Kidnappings in the Horn of Africa nation are fairly common -- usually of Somalis, sometimes of foreigners and increasingly of ship crews off the coast. They are a symptom of an 18-year conflict that has killed tens of thousands.In the past, most foreigners kidnapped in Somalia have been released unharmed after a ransom payment.On Friday, Somalia's Al Qaeda-linked al Shabaab movement took possession of two French hostages seized at a Mogadishu hotel on Tuesday. The Frenchmen were working as security advisers to President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed's government.Al Shabaab was the armed wing of the Islamic Courts movement that controlled Mogadishu and much of the south in 2006 before being ousted by an Ethiopian offensive.
- Reuters

Security official says gunmen kidnapped 3 foreign aide workers in Kenya, took them to Somalia

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Gunmen have seized three foreign aid workers in northern Kenya and taken them across the border into Somalia, a security official said Saturday.Roughly 10 gunmen arrived late on Friday night at a house in the border town of Mandera where the workers were staying, shot the watchman in the head and kidnapped the three, the official said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to talk to the media.He would not say who the victims worked for or what their nationalities are.The watchman was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries, the official said.The workers' kidnapping follows the seizure earlier this week of two French security advisers in the Somali capital.The French advisers were on a mission to train Somali government forces, which are fighting Islamist militiamen. They were abducted Tuesday from a hotel in Mogadishu, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.Somalia has not had a functioning government for 18 years since clan warlords overthrew Honourable Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre January 26, 1991 then unleashed their militias on each other.