Page 12 - ARUBA TODAY

A12 WORLD NEWS
Friday 4 May 2018

German nurse’s

abduction in Somali

capital raises fears

By ABDI GULED Somali colleague told se-
Associated Press curity officers he managed
MOGADISHU, Somalia (AP) to escape after one of the
— As night fell, gunmen car’s tires blew out.
sneaked into the Interna- “We shall never give up to
tional Committee of the rescue the hostage,” po-
Red Cross compound in lice Capt. Mohamed Hus-
Somalia’s capital through sein told The Associated
a back door and seized a Press.
German nurse and a local The deputy head of the
colleague before forcing Red Cross delegation in
them outside and into a Somalia, Daniel O’Malley,
waiting car. said in a statement that
The daring attack, carried the ICRC was “deeply con- A Somali man looks out from a nearby building at the compound of the International Committee
out despite the presence cerned” and called for the of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Mogadishu, Somalia, Thursday, May 3, 2018.
of nearly 10 security guards, woman’s immediate re-
struck fear once again into lease. bombing on a busy street. first of a foreign aid work- seasonal rains.
the aid community in So- “She is a nurse who was In recent years, the num- er in Mogadishu in more “I never felt more worried
malia, one of the world’s working every day to save ber of foreign aid workers in than six years, threatens and terrified than I do now,”
most dangerous countries lives and improve the Mogadishu has increased to complicate aid efforts said Ahmed Mohamed, a
for humanitarians. The ICRC health of some of Somalia’s as security improves after in a country that last year field officer with a local So-
said it was evacuating 10 most vulnerable people,” a quarter-century of violent faced severe drought af- mali aid organization. “This
non-Somali staffers to Ke- he said. chaos. fecting millions of people is a sad reality that we must
nya and “winding down” While security officials said The nurse’s abduction, the and now suffers from heavy face.”q
activities in parts of Somalia the ICRC compound’s se-
curity guards had been
outside the capital. detained, suspicion fell on Mexico finds 113 fake police
Wednesday night’s abduc-
tion of the nurse, identified what the spokesman for
by a colleague as Sonja Somalia’s internal secu- in raid on local force
Nientiet, came a day af- rity ministry, Abdulaziz Hild-
ter a Somali staffer with the hiban, called “a disgrun- MEXICO CITY (AP) — Pros- Diodoro Carrasco said the A few other officers were
World Health Organization tled former employee.” ecutors and soldiers raided town government had lost arrested for charging po-
was shot dead at close He said the suspect is the headquarters of a local control and could no lon- tential policemen between
range in a market else- known and “the gov- police force in central Mex- ger guarantee the safety $155 and $260 to allow
where in Mogadishu. And ernment is chasing their ico and found a strange of residents. them to avoid vetting and
in March, a local Red Cross whereabouts.” thing: 113 of the 185 officers He cited multiple instances background checks.
staffer died of his injuries af- The area where the ab- weren’t police at all. in which bound or dismem- The government-owned oil
ter a bomb attached to his duction occurred is home The Public Safety Depart- bered bodies had been company Pemex said 3,691
vehicle exploded near the to several aid agencies ment in Puebla state said left on the town’s streets. illegal taps were found na-
aid group’s office. and is considered one of late Wednesday the 113 Some of the fake officers tionwide in the first three
Hundreds of soldiers were the safest neighborhoods are facing charges equiva- presumably paid to avoid months of 2018, with about
deployed across Mogadi- in Mogadishu. Safety, how- lent to impersonating an vetting and registration 517 in Puebla. If the thefts
shu on Thursday as security ever, is relative in a city that officer and that the state procedures. continue at that level, they
officials said they believed is often targeted by the al- government would take Others weren’t registered would surpass the 10,363
the kidnappers had re- Qaida-linked al-Shabab over policing duties in the as police in any way, but taps found nationwide in
mained in the capital af- extremist group, which in town of San Martin Texme- video provided by the 2017, itself a big increase
ter abandoning their car October killed more than lucan. state government showed from the 6,873 found in
not far away. The nurse’s 500 people with a truck Puebla’s interior secretary them wearing uniforms. 2016.q