Kidnapped Frenchwoman 'in Somalia'

 

The disabled Frenchwoman snatched by Somali gunmen from a Kenyan resort island is "already in Somalia", a local official told AFP Sunday.

"She's already in Somalia. I can confirm that," Lamu District Commissioner Stephen Ikua told AFP by telephone, adding that the Somali Islamist extremist group Shebab was likely behind the kidnapping.

"It must have been Al-Shebab," he said.

A Kenyan government statement earlier said the woman was taken from her home on the archipelago of Lamu in east Kenya by "10 heavily armed Somali bandits," "suspected" to be Shebab.

The kidnapping is the second attack on foreigners in less than one month in this part of Kenya near the border with war-torn Somalia.

The woman, identified by local sources as Marie Dedieu, was taken from her home on Manda island, separated by an idyllic lagoon from the resort isle of Lamu.