kidnap mastermind habar-gidir hawiye Somali talaban Interior Minister MOGADISHU, July 16 (Xinhua) -- The Somali government said on Thursday insurgent groups shared the two French security advisers taken hostage by gunmen on Tuesday.Somali Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke said the two French hostages were split up by the two Islamist groups of Al-Shabaab and Hezbul Islam after a row between the groups over the "custody" of the foreign captives.Sharmarke said he was worried about the development, adding that the Somali government was trying to find a negotiated end to the abduction.The two French nationals were on Tuesday snatched from their hotel room in the south of the restive Somali capital of Mogadishu where they have been staying since July 9, according to hotel officials.The two were posing as journalists but were later revealed by the Somali government that they were security advisers who would train Somali government security forces.They were initially taken by gunmen belonging to the habar-gidir hawiye Hezbul Islam group led by the radical Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan DahirAweys, but the bigger and more powerful hawiye Al-Shabaab wing movement reportedly demanded that the hostages be handed over to them.
Hezbul Islam seemed to have agreed to hand in one of the hostages and kept one for themselves to avert inter-Islamist fighting that had been reportedly on the verge of breaking out over the hostages.
Foreign hostages are often taken for ransom by freelance gunmen who are usually not affiliated to the insurgent groups. But the current hostages who were connected with the Somali government are of interest to the insurgent groups who have been fighting government forces.
The two groups together control much of southern and central Somalia
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