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Italian aid worker kidnapped by gunmen in Kenya Gunmen kidnap Italian aid worker in Kenya
(about 2 hours later)
Kenyan police have said that unidentified gunmen have kidnapped an Italian volunteer in the coastal region of Kilifi during an attack in which five people were wounded. It is the first time a foreigner has been abducted in Kenya in several years. Gunmen kidnapped an Italian volunteer in south-east Kenya and shot five people late on Tuesday, police said, in the first abduction of a foreigner since a series of raids blamed on Somali Islamist militants six years ago.
“The gang … abducted an Italian lady aged 23 years who is a volunteer of Africa Milele Onlus, an NGO operating in the area,” the national police service said on Twitter. Men armed with AK-47 rifles attacked the town of Chakama and seized the 23-year-old woman who was working for the small Italian charity Africa Milele Onlus, the national police service added.
The country’s police chief, Joseph Boinnet, said the attack took place at about 8pm in the Chakama trading centre. The attackers spoke Somali and opened fire on people fleeing the scene, witness Chad Joshua Kazungu told Reuters by phone. “There were three attackers and they targeted the Italian lady,” he said.
The wounded were taken to hospital and officers were pursuing the attackers, police said. Five people were wounded, including a 10-year-old shot in the eye and a 12-year-old hit in the thigh, police said. They were all taken to hospital.
An unidentified witness told Kenyan TV channel KTN News: “The European lady got out of her room, instead of lying on the ground, to enquire what was going on. One of the attackers then slapped her.” Chakama, in Kenya’s Kilifi region, is 40 miles (60 km) inland from the bustling coastal tourist resort of Malindi.
Police said they had still not identified the attackers and their motives were unclear. Another unnamed witness told Kenyan TV channel KTN News that the attackers grabbed the woman as she came out of her room to find out what was going on.
“Their aim was to get money but they took off with her to the river and, before leaving the village, they started shooting in the air and they shot one woman and four boys,” the witness said.“Their aim was to get money but they took off with her to the river and, before leaving the village, they started shooting in the air and they shot one woman and four boys,” the witness said.
The police did not say whether the gunmen were suspect militants from al Shabaab, an Islamist group based in neighbouring Somalia that has launched deadly attacks in Kenya for years. It was responsible for the 2013 attack on a shopping mall in the capital, Nairobi, in which nearly 70 people were killed. Tourist numbers and earnings plunged sharply from 2012 to 2016 as militants from the al-Shabaab group in neighbouring Somalia launched a series of attacks on Kenyan soil in retaliation for Kenya’s military intervention in Somalia.
Suspected Shabaab militants have launched several attacks in recent months in which Kenyan soldiers have been killed but those attacks have all taken place in Lamu County, which is north of Kilifi and borders Somalia. A number of foreigners were kidnapped on the coast in 2011 and 2012 but none have been abducted since.
More to come … The Italian embassy in Nairobi declined to comment on Tuesday’s abduction and referred callers to the foreign ministry in Rome.
There was no immediate comment from the charity which, according to its website, was founded in 2011 by an Italian couple after they honeymooned in Africa. Chakama is nearly 185 miles (300 km) south-west of the Kenya-Somalia border.
KenyaKenya
ItalyItaly
AfricaAfrica
EuropeEurope
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