Somali gunmen kidnapped two Western journalists in the northern province of Puntland on Wednesday, police said, in the latest attack on foreigners working in the lawless Horn of Africa nation. Somalia has been immersed in civil conflict for the last 17 years. The government is fighting a two-year-old Islamist insurgency while the chaos has fuelled piracy in Somalia’s waters, bringing foreign warships rushing to the area. It is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for reporters. “I think both the journalists are British but we shall investigate … we are sending police to free them,” Puntland’s police spokesman Abshir Said Jama told Reuters. Two freelancers, an Australian and a Canadian, are still being held after being seized in the capital Mogadishu in August. Foreign aid workers have also been increasingly targeted this year, with a string of assassinations and kidnappings. More
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