MOGADISHU, April 19 (Reuters) – Gunmen kidnapped two aid workers, believed to be Belgian and Danish, in central Somalia on Sunday, a local elder and another relief worker said.

“Unidentified armed men kidnapped two MSF-Belgium aid workers in Bakol region,” local elder Hassan Maalin told Reuters by telephone from the area.

A local MSF worker who asked not to be named said one of the men was Belgian and the other Danish. He said they were taken in their own car along with their Somali bodyguards.

“They were heading to Hudur, the capital of Bakol, when gunmen took them away in their vehicle,” the MSF worker said, adding they had been driving from Rabdhure town.

Somalia has been mired in conflict for 18 years and is one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Aid workers and journalists have often been kidnapped in the lawless Horn of Africa nation. Hostages are generally relatively well treated and released, often after a ransom is paid.

Attacks on humanitarian workers, which are normally blamed on hardline Islamist rebels and clan militia, have cut the ability of relief agencies to respond to a humanitarian crisis that many say is the continent’s most acute.

More than 1 million people have been uprooted in the last two years by fighting, and more than 3 million Somalis — about a third of the population — depend on emergency food aid.

The kidnappers have also struck on, and across, the border with neighbouring Kenya. Islamist rebels seized five Kenyans on the frontier last month, but later freed them. [ID:nLS428423]

In February, two elderly Italian nuns were also released by Somali gunmen who had kidnapped them during a cross-border raid into Kenya in November 2008. [ID:nLJ584911] (Additional reporting by Mohamed Ahmed; Writing by Daniel Wallis; Editing by Sophie Hares)

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