MOGADISHU, Nov 5: Gunmen stormed an airstrip in central Somalia on Wednesday, kidnapping a group of foreign and local aid workers, witnesses and humanitarian sources said.

Six foreigners — two Kenyans, two French, a Bulgarian and a Belgian — were among those seized, a spokesman for the European Commission said in Brussels.

The kidnappings near Dusamareb town were the latest in a series of abductions of humanitarian workers this year in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.

“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 a local resident, 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 militants accuse President Abdullahi Yusuf’s government of staging such attacks to blacken their name.

French-based Action Contre La Faim (ACF) charity said four of its people were taken, but did not give their nationalities.

“Two Kenyan pilots and four other foreigners working for ACF were kidnapped,” one local charity worker said.

“They are two French ladies, a Belgian man and a Bulgarian lady.”

“It was a flight under contract to the EU Commission. It was an Action Contre la Faim operation,” the European Commission spokesman said.—Reuters