|
The two women were seized when their car was ambushed by a gang with machine guns in Bosasso port as they drove to a hospital. It was the latest in a string of such abductions in the semi-autonomous northern Puntland region.
The kidnap gang was pursued by local troops and engaged in a gunfight shortly after, locals said.
“The kidnappers are still surrounded. We’re still hopeful that we will free the hostages and capture the abductors,” said Yusuf Bidde, a local government official.
Bidde did not know whether the abductees were safe or whether negotiations of any kind were going on.
Puntland’s vice president Hassan Dahir Afqura said the kidnappers would not be allowed to negotiate.
“Kidnapping has become a business in Puntland,” he said.
“We will not engage in dialogue with abductors. We will use force to free the hostages.”
The abduction came two days after gunmen in Puntland released French journalist Gwen Le Gouil, whom they kidnapped and held for eight days demanding $80,000 in ransom.
Spain’s ambassador in Nairobi, Nicolas Martin Cinto, was quoted by Spanish news agency Efe as saying the kidnappers of Spanish doctor Mercedes Garcia and Argentine nurse Pilar Bouza had surrendered and asked not to be killed.
A Spanish Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said it seemed the drama “will be resolved”.
U.N. envoy to Somalia Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said he was “shocked” by the kidnapping and urged the pair’s release.
ARMED MEN
Known for its relative stability compared with chaotic south Somalia, Puntland has, however, become increasingly associated with kidnappings, hijackings and piracy.
“Six men armed with guns approached me, blocking the road,” the MSF pair’s driver, who asked not to be named, told Reuters. “They hit me very badly and kidnapped the women in their car.”
Foreigners in Somalia often run foul of local clans by failing to seek permission to travel through their territories.
Somali kidnappers are known to treat their captives well and almost never kill them, viewing them as an investment on which they expect a return in the form of ransom.
The women’s translator said the assailants beat up their chauffeur before ordering them into another car and driving them off. “The abductors had a Toyota Surf and they blocked the way we were going,” added the translator, who asked not to be named.
An MSF spokesman, Javier Sancho, said the two kidnapped employees were working on a nutritional project for the Spanish branch of the international charity.
“We don’t know in what circumstances or what exactly has happened,” he told Spanish radio.
(Additional reporting by Teresa Larraz in Madrid; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne and Tim Cocks; Editing by Giles Elgood)
Meanwhile, A FRENCH journalist held hostage for eight days in northern Somalia and freed on Christmas eve has left the country to return home to France, local authorities said Tuesday.
“The French journalist accompanied by a French diplomat left for Djibouti early yesterday”, said Bile Mohamud Qabowsade, an official at the information ministry of Puntland, the breakaway Somali state where cameraman Gwen Le Gouil was captured on December 16.
The French journalist was freed by his captors on Monday.
Le Gouil, who was not harmed during his captivity, is expected to fly back to France directly from Djibouti, which neighbours Somalia.
The journalist had travelled to the Puntland port of Bosasso to film a documentary on the mass smuggling of refugees from Somalia and other war-torn Horn of Africa countries across the Gulf of Aden.
Somali police chief survives attack
MOGADISHU, Somalia –
Gunmen threw grenades at the home of the regional police chief in south-western Somalia, killing two of his grandchildren and a bodyguard while he escaped injury, authorities said on Tuesday.
Seven other family members were wounded in the Monday-night attack, which police said was a failed assassination attempt against General Ibrahim Hashi Gabow, the regional police chief based in Baidoa.
“They threw hand grenades into the house,” said Aden Bid, the commander of Baidoa’s police station. “The two children died at the hospital, but the bodyguard died on the spot.” The children were aged five and eight.
Baidoa, 250km south-west of the capital, Mogadishu, is the headquarters for the Somali Parliament and several senior government officials live there. Security in Baidoa has been deteriorating, with increased attacks on lawmakers. Last week, a judge was fatally shot there.
The arid Horn of Africa nation has had no functioning national government since 1991, when clan leaders overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other.
Ethiopia, with tacit United States approval, sent soldiers to Somalia last year to wipe out the Council of Islamic Courts, a radical Muslim group that had seized control of the capital and much of the southern part of the country. But members of the Islamic group soon began an insurgency with the support of Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea.
Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict this year, and the United Nations says Somalia is facing Africa’s biggest humanitarian crisis.
Somalia silences independent radio station
MOGADISHU – Somali authorities in the capital Mogadishu on Wednesday ordered an independent radio station off air, the station’s director said, the latest in a series of restrictions imposed on the media.
The director of Radio Somaliweyn told reporters that the mayor or Mogadishu had ordered his statio to stop broadcasting after it ‘violated media rules.’
‘The mayor himself contacted the radio station early this morning and ordered us to stop broadcasting and we did,’ Abdirahman Hassan Hudeyfi said.
‘There was a programme in which we hosted one of the former Islamic courts officials and he was talking about the difference between the Islamic courts era and today,’ producer Abdulkadir Dulyare told AFP.
The Islamic Courts Union were a fundamentalist militia which briefly took control of large parts of the Horn of Africa country last year before being ousted by Ethiopian troops who came to the rescue of the embattled government.
The organisation has officially disbanded but its fighters are still involved in a deadly insurgency against the government forces and its Ethiopian allies, while its leadership has formed a broad opposition alliance in exile.
Authorities in Mogadishu were not immediately available to comment.
‘The closure is the latest in a series of coercive measures for which there has been no legal authority,’ Paris-based media rights group Reporters Without Borders said in a statement.
The Somali authorities have closed down several independent radio stations in recent months, accusing them of supporting the Islamist opposition. (AFP)
Ethiomedia.com – An African-American news and views website.
© Copyright 2007 Ethiomedia.com. Email: [email protected]