An aid worker from Northern Ireland is missing and feared kidnapped in north Somalia, an aid organisation confirmed this morning.
The aid worker and another Kenyan employee, both working for Care International, have been missing from the semi-autonomous Puntland region since yesterday.
"We know the elders and local authorities are already working on it," said a Care International regional spokeswoman.
The Department of Foreign Affairs told ireland.comthat although there was no Irish embassy in Somalia, embassy officials in Addis Abba have been asked to make contact with Care International in the region.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern has asked the consular section in Dublin to contact the charity to get details on the feared kidnapping.
Puntland runs itself independently from the rest of Somalia and has been relatively more peaceful in recent years.
But the whole Somali region has a history of abductions and assassinations of local and foreign aid workers, particularly in the self-declared independent enclave of Somaliland.
Authorites have generally blamed militant Islamists for the attacks on foreign workers.
Care International said details of the latest incident were sketchy but that it looked like a "local issue".
"This is horrible news. We are so sad for the aid workers who are helping our people. We will do everything possible, even if it means using force, to release the hostages," Puntland's interior and security minister Mohamed Abdi told reporters.
A reporter in Puntland's capital Bossasso said he had spoken to the kidnappers' accomplices who said the hostages were safe.
"They are holding them in the thick bushes 10 km (6 miles) from the village where they were kidnapped. But the gunmen keep moving them to prevent the Puntland authorities from detecting them," Abdiqani Hassan said.
"They will most likely ask for a ransom ... The gunmen are militias known to engage in such acts."