Mogadishu, January 22: Somali local government and military officials say gunmen have kidnapped a US citizen in the country’s central semi-autonomous region of Galmudug.
Abshir Dini, the interior minister of the Galmudug region, said on Saturday that abductors have apparently taken the victim to Hobyo, a coastal town in the Somalian Mudug region, which is known as a pirate base.
Ali Abdulrahman, a security official of the region, said that the man was travelling on the airport road near the town of Galkayo, situated about 450 kilometers (279 miles) north of the Somali capital Mogadishu on Saturday, when his car was surrounded by armed men.
“He was in a car when two pickup trucks full of gunmen stopped the vehicle and took him away,” Abdulrahman said.
Kidnappings are relatively common in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation of Somalia.
An American woman, a Danish man and a Somali working for a Danish Demining Group were kidnapped near Galkayo airport last October.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when warlords overthrew former dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
Strategically located in the Horn of Africa, Somalia remains one of the countries generating the highest number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.
——Agencies