A German nurse working for the International Committee of the Red Cross has been kidnapped by armed men from a compound in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu.
The abduction, on Wednesday evening, took place after gunmen entered the site and grabbed the woman, taking her out through a back entrance to evade security guards.
The nurse was later identified in reports as Sonja Nientiet, who had worked for the ICRC since 2014 in conflict zones, including Syria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The kidnapping was the second serious incident involving health workers in Somalia this week following the killing of an employee of the World Health Organisation, Mariam Abdullahi, on Tuesday.
Daniel O’Malley, the ICRC’s deputy head in Somalia, said: “We are deeply concerned about the safety of our colleague.
“She is a nurse who was working every day to save lives and improve the health of some of Somalia’s most vulnerable.”
A police operation is underway, said local officer Major Mohamed Hussein: “We got the report minutes after she was abducted and now we are searching the whole area. We hope we shall find her.”
No group has claimed responsibility but, in the past, foreigners, journalists and aid workers among them, have been kidnapped by armed gangs or al-Shabaab militants and held for ransom, sometimes for years at a time.
Abductions and killings of Somali aid workers are common, but targeting foreign workers has become less frequent in recent years as security has improved.
In March, Abdulhafid Yusuf Ibrahim, a Somali national who had worked for ICRC for only five months, died after a bomb exploded beneath his car as he left the office.
Unlike many other international aid agencies working in Somalia, the ICRC does not base itself within the well-defended perimeter of Mogadishu’s airport, which acts as the city’s “green zone”, housing foreign embassies and the UN agencies coordinating the humanitarian and political response to Somalia’s crises.
Germany’s foreign minister, Heiko Maas, who is visiting Ethiopia and Tanzania this week, told journalists in Addis Ababa he would not comment “on any hostage cases”.
“I have deep respect for all people, especially people from Germany, working abroad in order to help others,” said Maas.
