Somali Police Shoot Two Suspects In Kidnappings Of French Journalist

By: Police killed two men suspected in the recent kidnappings of three foreigners during a fierce gunbattle Thursday in northern Somalia, witnesses and officials said.

A police officer also was killed and six others wounded in the gunfight, authorities said.

The two men killed were suspected in the kidnappings last month of a French journalist and two aid workers from Spain and Argentina, police said. All three have been released.

On Thursday, officers raided a house in the semiautonomous region of Puntland, said Muqtar Ahmed, a local resident.

Police were acting on a tip, according to local government official Yusuf Bide. Officers had been on their trail for days, said a police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

A gunfight broke out after officers surrounded the house and several of the suspected kidnappers escaped when clan members came to their aid, the officer said.

Puntland's police chief, Col. Abdiaziz Said Gamey, said the suspects belonged to the gang that last month abducted the French cameraman in one incident, and the two workers for Medecins sans Frontieres, also known as Doctors Without Borders, in another.

He vowed to pursue the gang until all are brought to trial.

"We have captured several people, some of them gunmen and others who wanted to help them sneak out of the house," he said. "One policeman was killed and six others were wounded during the gunbattle."

Puntland is generally considered safer than the war-wracked south, where government troops and their Ethiopian allies are battling an Islamic insurgency and thousands of Somalis have been killed this year.

But in recent months the two northern regions have seen an upsurge in piracy and kidnappings, and a border dispute has raised tensions.

The impoverished Horn of Africa nation has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in a 1991 coup and then turned their clan-based militias on one another.
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