Gunmen stormed an airstrip in Somalia yesterday, kidnapping two Kenyan pilots and four European aid workers in the latest strike against humanitarian organisations in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.
The Europeans - two French, a Bulgarian and a Belgian - were among a group on a runway near the central Somali town of Dusamareb when the gang struck, local residents said.
"Heavily armed men with three battle-wagons and three small cars kidnapped the foreigners who landed a plane, and also some people waiting for them at the airstrip," said Farah Osman.
Aid workers have been increasingly targeted this year for assassination and kidnap in Somalia, where Islamist insurgents are fighting the government and its Ethiopian military allies.
Suspicion generally falls on clan militia and the insurgents. But the Islamists accuse President Abdullahi Yusuf's government of staging such attacks to blacken their name.
The four aid workers were with French-based Action Contre La Faim (ACF).
"The kidnappers took the four Action Contre la Faim workers as well as the two Kenyan pilots of a plan chartered by the European Commission," ACF said in a statement. "A crisis unit was immediately set up in Paris and Nairobi."
A local charity worker said the two French hostages and the Bulgarian were women.
Mired in anarchy and awash with weapons since the 1991 overthrow of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre, south and central Somalia is off-limits for all but a small band of foreign aid workers, and local staff face extreme risks by association.
Kidnapping can be a lucrative business in Somalia, with hostages generally treated well in anticipation of a ransom.
Gunmen are still holding hostage two Italians, a Kenyan and a Briton - plus three locals - abducted in April and May.
Two other foreign aid workers for Médecins du Monde, of unknown nationality, are still being held after they were captured in east Ethiopia and taken over the border in September.
The kidnappings and attacks are crippling the operations of aid agencies at a time when UN officials say Somalia ranks as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, along with Darfur, Congo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than a million of Somalia's nine million people live as internal refugees, and their plight has been worsened by record food prices and drought.