Authorities in northeastern Somalia said they have arrested five people in connection with the kidnapping of two foreign journalists and accused local fixers for orchestrating their abduction, a regional governor said Monday.
"The security forces arrested the five people in Bossaso on suspicion of having links with the abductors," Muse Geelle Yusuf, the regional governor of Puntland, told Xinhua by phone from Bossaso.
"We believe two local reporters working for the foreign journalists were behind the kidnapping."
The two European journalists, from Spain and Britain, along with two local journalists working for them as fixers, were abducted last week as they prepared to fly back home. The foreign journalists came to northeastern Somalia to cover the rampant piracy in the seas off the region.
Yusuf acknowledged that he did not have hard evidence but added that the two local journalists, who are now thought to be held along with the two European journalists, asked the security forces who guarded the journalists to leave on the night before their abduction.
The governor said that the local security forces are in "hot pursuit" of the captors who are believed to be hiding in the hills around Bossaso, the commercial capital of the semiautonomous state of Puntland.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the abduction of the foreign journalists and no specific demands has been issued by the hostage takers but the region is known to be hotbed of kidnappings of foreigners and piracy around its coast.
Half a dozen other foreigners, including two other foreign journalists from Canada and Australia, are still being held hostage in Somalia. Local gangs who take foreigners hostage for ransom often treat their hostages well in expectation for the large ransom payment that eventually leads to the release of the hostages.
Source:Xinhua
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