Gunmen escape with French hostage into Somalia

Woman kidnapped early on Saturday from private house on island of Manda on Kenya’s north coast Kidnappers escaped into Somalia with a French hostage on Saturday after a gun battle with Kenyan security forces. Kenya’s tourism minister, Najib Balala, said several of the gang had been wounded and they were holed up on the Somali coast about 15 miles from the border with Kenya. “Now that it is dark it is next to impossible to continue to follow. The moment is lost,” said Colonel John Steed, in charge of the UN’s counter-piracy unit in Nairobi. “Now it reverts to normal kidnapping negotiations.” The 66-year-old disabled woman – named in reports as 66-year-old Marie Dedieu – was grabbed in the early hours of Saturday from a private house on the island of Manda on Kenya’s northern coast. The victim’s Kenyan boyfriend, John Lepapa, said six masked men brandishing assault rifles had stormed their beach house. The wheelchair-bound woman was then carried to a waiting boat in the second abduction of a foreign visitor in three weeks. “They’ve crossed the border into Ras Kamboni,” Balala said, referring to the southernmost tip of Somalia that is under the control of militia fighters. “There are two aircraft on top of them monitoring their position.” The wounded members of the gang appear to be hampering its ability to move deeper inland, he said. Earlier, Kenyan coastguards surrounded the kidnappers near the border with Somalia and the bandits fired into the air in an attempt to scare off the two boats and a circling aircraft. Analysts and diplomats in the region had warned that Somali pirates were likely to turn to softer targets, such as tourists in Kenya, in response to much more robust defence of merchant vessels by private security guards. Kenya Somalia Africa Piracy at sea France Europe guardian.co.uk

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