Somali gunmen kidnapped three foreign aid workers Saturday in a raid on a Kenyan border town as Somali hijackers released a German ship and its crew after three month in exchange for a ransom, officials said.
The three were snatched from their office in Mandera, in northeast Kenya.
"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, a senior official in the neighboring district in Somalia, said.
The nationalities of the aid workers and the organization for which they were working were not immediately clear.
"We haven’t seen them yet, but they have crossed the border," an elder in Bulohawo, Adan Wardhere told AFP, saying the kidnappers had seriously injured a security guard during the abduction.
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.
Somalia’s government and a 4,300-strong African Union force have been unable to take control of rebel strongholds in Mogadishu and other parts of the country despite international support and training.
Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout and Australian photographer Nigel Geoffrey Brennan, who were snatched on Aug. 23 last year, are still being held by their abductors.
German ship released
In other developments Somali hijackers said they released a German ship and its crew which they had been holding for three months after being paid a ransom of 1.8 million dollars.
"We have released the ship and its crew overnight after receiving a ransom of one million and eight hundred dollars. It is free now and gone," Mohamed Abdi, a pirate in Eyl told AFP by telephone.
In Berlin the German foreign ministry confirmed a German cargo ship had been freed and identified it as the MV Victoria, flying the Antigua and Barbuda flag.
The hijackers had not named the ship but it had initially been thought to be the Hansa Stavanger.
The 146-meter MV Victoria, belonging to a German shipper, was captured on May 5 with 11 men on board, 75 kilometers (45 miles) south of the Yemeni port of al-Mukalla, as it was on its way to the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
Media reports in Berlin said the crew was Romanian.
The Hansa Stavanger, a container ship, was seized on April 4 in the Indian Ocean, with its crew of 24, including five Germans, one of them the captain.
Elders in Eyl confirmed the release of a German ship but were unable to comment on the ransom.
"The German ship was released overnight by the pirates and it moved but I don’t know what has been paid to the pirates," Abdulahi Garaad Mohamed, an elder in Eyl said.
Somali hijackers attacked more than 130 merchant ships off Somalia last year, a rise of more than 200 percent on 2007, according to the Kuala Lumpur-based International Maritime Bureau’s Piracy Reporting Center.
The world’s naval powers have deployed dozens of warships to the lawless waters off Somalia over the past year in a bid to curb attacks on one of the world’s busiest maritime trade routes.