Gunmen in Kenya abduct Italian volunteer, shoot locals

Armed militants in Kenya have kidnapped an Italian volunteer in a raid on a village in the southeast of the country, while shooting and wounding five residents, police say.

“The attackers fired indiscriminately at residents” before kidnapping the 23-year-old, who worked as a volunteer at an orphanage, during the attack after dark on Tuesday evening at Chakama, a small village in the coastal Kilifi County, police announced in a statement on Wednesday.

The village is nearly 60 kilometers inland from the coastal town of Malindi, which is popular with Italian tourists and expatriates.

According to police authorities, those injured included three children. 

The wounded have been transferred to a local hospital as police “deployed to track down the criminals,” police added.

Police said the armed kidnappers were armed with AK-47 rifles, and warned against speculation — rife in the local Kenyan press — that Daesh-linked al-Shabab militants from Somalia may have been behind the abduction.

Police chief Joseph Boinnet also emphasized that he did not yet know who the attackers were. “We are investigating, but people should stop speculating,” he told reporters.

Another police officer, speaking to AFP on the condition of anonymity about the ongoing probe, said, “We understand that there has been a dispute at that orphanage and that is what we are looking at.”

SS