2 Italian Catholic nuns kidnapped in Somalia

Monday, November 10, 2008
By MOHAMED SHEIKH NOR

Gunmen seized two Italian Catholic nuns from a church in northern Kenya before dawn Monday and took them across the border into a Somali region largely controlled by Islamist insurgents, officials and witnesses said.

The Italian Foreign Ministry said its crisis unit was working with its ambassador to Kenya to secure the nuns' freedom. The papal nuncio in Kenya is also involved, the ministry said.

The nuns were seized from their home in El Wak, on the Somali border about 420 miles (675 kilometers) northeast of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, the Kenyan Red Cross said. the rest