(27 Dec 2007) SHOTLIST
1. Various of exteriors of the hospital where the aid workers worked in the town of Bossaso, in the region of Puntland
2. Various of malnourished children and women inside the hospital where the aid workers worked
3. SOUNDBITE: (Somali) Mohamed Abdullahi, Driver of Kidnapped Aid Workers:
++NON-VERBATIM++ "When we were trying to get into our car, six armed men came towards us and they immediately kidnapped the two foreigners. They also beat me up."
4. Wide of exterior of hospital were the aid workers worked
STORYLINE:
Somali security forces were on the trail of gunmen who kidnapped a doctor and a nurse working for an international aid group in northeastern Somalia, officials said on Thursday.
The victims, a doctor from Spain and a nurse from Argentina, were seized on Wednesday near the building where they worked for the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres in Puntland, a semi-autonomous region in northeastern Somalia, officials said.
"When we were trying to get into our car, six armed men came towards us and they immediately kidnapped the two foreigners. They also beat me up," Mohamed Abdullahi, driver of the kidnapped workers, told AP Television on Wednesday.
Roger Pek, a spokesman for MSF, also known as Doctors Without Borders, told The Associated Press by telephone from Barcelona that the kidnappers were negotiating to try and secure their own freedom.
Just days earlier, a French journalist, Gwen Le Gouil, was released after eight days in captivity in Puntland.
Le Gouil's kidnappers had demanded about 70-thousand US dollars in ransom, but police said it was not paid.
Puntland is known as a staging post for human traffickers running boats into Yemen, and piracy has been rampant off its coast.
In recent months, however, the US Navy has led international patrols to try to combat piracy in the region, cutting down on the pirates' ability to rob merchant ships and vessels carrying aid.
Puntland Trade Minister Abdisamad Yusuf Mohamed Abwan told The Associated Press that two suspects in the latest abductions were captured, but they did not have the women.
He denied reports of a fire-fight.
Susan Sandars, a regional spokeswoman for Medecins Sans Frontieres, identified the abducted staffers as Mercedes Garcia, a Spanish doctor, and Argentinean nurse Pilar Bauza.
Puntland is about 1,500 kilometres (930 miles) north of the Somali capital, Mogadishu, which is at the centre of an Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year.
The United Nations say Somalia is facing Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.
Somalia, an arid nation in the Horn of Africa, has had no functioning national government since 1991 when clan leaders overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other.
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