[Daily Nation (Kenya)] Two Kenyan aid workers and a Somali doctor were kidnapped in lawless northern Somalia on Wednesday, probably by pirates, a local police official told AFP.Several local employees from aid agencies and non-governmental groups in Galkayo and Garowe, another town farther north, told AFP the victims work for Swedish group International Aid Services.
The organization said it would not be commenting in the immediate future.
"Two Kenyans and a local Somali doctor were kidnapped and the initial reports indicate the kidnappers were pirates, but we are still investigating the incident," said police official Adan Warsame in Galkayo, close to where the abductions occurred.
Galkayo straddles the border separating semi-autonomous Puntland
...a region in northeastern Somalia, centered on Garowe in the Nugaal province. Its leaders declared the territory an autonomous state in 1998. Puntland and the equally autonomous Somaliland seem to have avoided the clan rivalries and warlordism that have typified the rest of Somalia, which puts both places high on the list for Islamic subversion...
from the self-proclaimed separate region of Galmudug
...a semiautonomous region in central Somalia, bordering Puntland on the north. Galmudug is not trying to obtain international recognition as a separate nation, but rather considers itself autonomous within the larger Somali federalism, for what that's worth...
to the south.
Another Galkayo police official, Mohammed Ise Hassan, said the kidnapping took place Wednesday afternoon near the village of Baadweyn, about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north.
Hassan said the abductees' driver and two of their police escorts were maimed.