Gunmen have demanded a $1-million ransom for the release of three aid workers taken over the weekend, a local elder said on Monday.
Somalia is one of the world’s most dangerous places for aid workers and attacks on relief organisations — normally blamed on Islamist rebels or clan militias — have forced groups to scale back on humanitarian operations.
”We came back this morning with empty hands,” said local elder Aden Isak Ali from Rabdhure town, near where gunmen seized a medical team from the charity Médecins sans Frontières (MSF)-Belgium.
”The gunmen who hijacked MSF aid workers told us this morning that they will only release the foreign workers if they are given $1-million as ransom,” he said.
Local elder Hassan Maalin told Reuters by telephone from central Somalia on Sunday: ”Unidentified armed men kidnapped two MSF-Belgium aid workers in Bakol region.”
The MSF in Brussels said it had lost contact with its team in central Somalia, which included a Belgian and a Dutchman, and was seeking more information. A local MSF worker said a Somali employee was also taken.
”The team includes two international staff, one Belgian and one Dutch. We are contacting the families. For now we cannot give any names,” it said in a statement.
A local MSF worker in Somalia who asked not to be named said three aid workers, incuding a Belgian and a Somali, had been seized along with their car and Somali bodyguards.
He had earlier identified the third aid worker as a Dane.
”They were heading to Hudur, the capital of Bakol, when gunmen took them away in their vehicle,” he said, adding that they had been carrying out a nutrition study in Rabdhure town.
Separately, masked gunmen killed a former local employee of aid agency Care International, in Merka, 90km south of the capital Mogadishu.
”Omar Sharif … was shot dead near the mosque. Masked gunmen shot him in the head and he died on the spot,” Merka resident Ahmed Hussein by telephone.
Care suspended all activities in South-Central Somalia in October, 2008, after a threat from a militant group.
Somalia has been mired in civil conflict for 18 years and is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.
Aid workers and journalists have often been kidnapped in the lawless Horn of Africa nation. Hostages are generally relatively well treated and released, often after a ransom is paid.
More than one million Somalis have been uprooted in the last two years by fighting, and more than three million — about a third of the population — depend on emergency food aid.
The kidnappers have also struck on and across the border with neighbouring Kenya. Islamist rebels seized five Kenyans on the frontier last month, but later freed them.
In February, two elderly Italian nuns were released by Somali gunmen who had kidnapped them during a cross-border raid into Kenya in November 2008. — Reuters