Two employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF = Læger uden Grænser)) have been kidnapped by gunmen in central Somalia, BBC online reports Sunday.
The two men, who work for MSF-Belgium (one is Belgian the other is Dutch) , were taken in their car with their Somali bodyguards in Hudur, Bakol region, which is run by the radical Islamist al-Shabab insurgent group.
The UN estimates 35 aid staff were killed last year and 26 abducted in the Horn of Africa nation, which has not had a functioning government since 1991.
The dead included three MSF workers – a Kenyan doctor, a French logistician, and a Somali driver – caught in a roadside bomb in the town of Kismayo in January 2008.
Al-Shabab has sworn to topple Somalias fragile federal transitional government, which is backed by African Union peacekeepers in Mogadishu.