Somali Gunmen Abduct Elderly Tourist in Kenya

 

Africa

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

Published: October 1, 2011

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somali gunmen staged another brazen attack inside Kenya on Saturday morning, snatching a French tourist from a beachside bungalow three weeks after a similar assault.

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Kenya’s tour operators are particularly concerned that these two attacks could be a devastating blow to the country’s billion-dollar tourism industry, a pillar of the national economy. Kenyan security officials have already enlarged forces on the Somali border, saying that the chaos from Somalia, which has not had a central government for more than 20 years, is increasingly seeping into Kenya.
According to witnesses, a speedboat carrying 9 or 10 heavily armed Somalis quietly slipped into the channel between Lamu and Manda islands around 3 a.m. Saturday. Lamu is fabled for its pristine beaches, centuries-old ruins and $1,000-a-night guesthouses and is one of the best known tourist destinations in East Africa. Manda Island is just across a narrow channel that is usually plied by sunburned windsurfers and classic wooden dhows rather than speedboats. The islands are about 60 miles south of the Somali border.
Witnesses said the attackers may have been tipped off by local workers because they beached their speedboat right outside the bungalow of an elderly, wheelchair-bound French woman who has been visiting Manda Island for years. The gunmen burst into the woman’s bungalow and apparently dragged her out of bed, witnesses said, and when the local staff tried to come to her rescue, the gunmen blasted a barrage of shots into the air. No one was believed to have been hurt.
The gunmen raced away in their speedboat with the woman but without her wheelchair, north toward Somalia. By Saturday afternoon, Kenyan officials said their naval forces had caught up with the attackers just south of the Somali border and that the two sides were locked in a standoff at sea.
“Two boats of the Kenyan coast guard have surrounded the boat on which the gunmen and woman are,” Tourism Minister Najib Balala told Reuters. “Our fear is if we do drown the boat, we will drown the woman.”
Several hostage standoffs with Somali gunmen have ended in deaths. In the worst case, earlier this year, a pirate gang hijacked four Americans cruising the Arabian Sea in a yacht full of Bibles. The United States Navy quickly closed in, and the pirates shot and killed all the hostages before being captured.
The attack in Manda was very similar to what happened in Kiwayu, Kenya, on Sept. 11, when a speedboat of Somali gunmen zoomed up in the middle of the night to a fancy resort just south of the Somali border, burst into a bungalow and attacked a British couple. The gunmen killed the husband and then bundled up the wife before speeding away. According to Western officials, a pirate gang is now holding the woman hostage hundreds of miles away within Somalia.
Tour operators in Lamu said that the Kenyan police, who are widely considered undisciplined and corrupt, will not be able to protect them.
On Saturday, the French government urged its citizens to stay away from Lamu.
“This could be the end of us,” said one guesthouse manager, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. “We had been telling tourists don’t worry, Somalia is far away, but now it seems these guys have figured out it really isn’t.”