Kenya troops move into Somalia to pursue kidnappers

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Kenya has sent troops into Somalia in a bid to pursue militants it suspects of carrying out a spate of kidnappings.

Government spokesman Alfred Matua said troops were pursuing Somali al-Shabab militants across the border.

Two Spanish aid workers were abducted from Kenya's sprawling Dadaab refugee camp on Thursday.

A British woman and a French woman have been kidnapped from remote beach resorts over the past month, dealing a major blow to Kenya's tourism industry.

'Serious threats'

Residents and reporters close to the border area confirmed on Sunday that Kenyan troops, backed up by military aircraft, were heading into Somalia.

In response, al-Shabab - the radical Islamist insurgent group in Somalia - tried to raise the alarm in the areas it controls, the Associated Press news agency reports.

Residents in the town of Qoqani said militants were going into people's homes and forcibly recruiting new fighters, according to the AP.

Abdirahman Omar Osman, spokesman for Somalia's Western-backed government, said Kenya is "providing logistical and moral support" but insisted that Somali forces are the ones "battling the Shabab on the ground".

Kenyan Defence Minister Yusuf Mohammed Haji said: "If you are attacked by an enemy, you are allowed to pursue that enemy until where you get him. We will force them far away from our border."

The move comes days after the two aid workers with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), named as Blanca Thiebaut and Montserrat Serra, were taken from Dadaab, the world's largest refugee camp.

Just 80km (50 miles) from the Somali border, Dadaab currently houses nearly half a million refugees, most of whom are Somalis who have fled conflict and famine.

A Kenyan driver working for the Care charity was abducted from Dadaab on 21 September.

Last month, 56-year-old Briton Judith Tebbutt was kidnapped - and her husband David killed - by gunmen while the couple were on holiday in a remote Kenyan resort at Kiwayu.

On 1 October, a 66-year-old French woman was seized by an armed gang on Kenya's northern resort island of Manda and taken to Somalia.

The UK Foreign Office has advised against all but essential travel to the Kenyan coast near the Somali border.