(Reuters) - Somali gunmen have kidnapped five local employees of an Italian charity and the United Nations in the latest attack on humanitarian staff in the country, the head of the Italian group said on Tuesday.Elio Sommavilla, founder of the Water For Life charity, told Reuters four of those kidnapped worked for his charity, identifying the fifth as an agronomist with the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). FAO in Rome could not confirm the kidnapping.
Witnesses had earlier said two Somalis, a man and a woman, were kidnapped when a dozen men with rifles stopped them on their way to Mogadishu on Monday and turned their two cars into bush near Afgooye, west of the capital. 'I could see the two cars marked 'WFL' being hijacked,' bus-driver Hassan Osman said.
Suspicion for kidnappings generally falls on clan militia and Islamist insurgents who are fighting the Somali government and their Ethiopian military allies.
Gunmen are still holding hostage four foreign aid workers -- two Italians, a Kenyan and a Briton -- and another three Somalis abducted in April and May. Two U.N. workers from Sweden and Denmark were briefly taken on Saturday in south Somalia, until local elders and colleagues negotiated their release with Islamists.