Gunmen abduct Italian aid worker in Kenya

A group of unidentified gunmen have abducted an Italian woman working for an aid organisation in south-east Kenya, police say.

The men, reportedly armed with rifles, "fired indiscriminately" before taking the 23-year-old volunteer from a trading centre in Kilifi County.

Kenyan police have said that unidentified gunmen have kidnapped an Italian volunteer in the coastal region of Kilifi during an attack in which five people were wounded. It is the first time a foreigner has been abducted in Kenya in several years.

“The gang ... abducted an Italian lady aged 23 years who is a volunteer of Africa Milele Onlus, an NGO operating in the area,” the National Police Service said on Twitter.

The country’s police chief, Joseph Boinnet, said the attack took place at about 8pm in the Chakama trading centre.

The wounded were taken to hospital and officers were pursuing the attackers, police said.

An unidentified witness told Kenyan TV channel KTN News, “The European lady got out of her room, instead of lying on the ground, to enquire what was going on. One of the attackers then slapped her.”

“Their aim was to get money but they took off with her to the river and, before leaving the village, they started shooting in the air and they shot one woman and four boys,” the witness said.

The police did not say if the gunmen were suspect militants from al Shabaab, an Islamist group based in neighbouring Somalia that has launched deadly attacks in Kenya for years, including the 2013 attack on a shopping mall in the capital, Nairobi, in which nearly 70 people were killed.

Suspected Shabaab militants have launched several attacks in recent months in which Kenyan soldiers have been killed but those attacks have all taken place in Lamu County, which is north of Kilifi and borders Somalia.