Aid workers kidnapped in Somalia

Four European aid workers and two Kenyan pilots have been kidnapped at gunpoint from an airstrip in central Somalia, near the Ethiopian border.

The six members of the French aid group Action Against Hunger were taken from the town of Dhusa-Mareb.

Somalia has been wracked by conflict since 1991 and is now facing an Islamist and nationalist insurgency.

Ethiopia helped dislodge Islamists from power in 2006. Aid workers have been increasingly targeted.

"Heavily armed men with three battle-wagons and three small cars kidnapped the foreigners who landed a plane, and also some people waiting for them at the airstrip," a local resident, Farah Osman, told Reuters news agency.

Those kidnapped include two French women, one Bulgarian woman and a Belgian man.

The current Somali government is internationally recognised, but has lost control of large parts of the country to an insurgency driven by Islamist and nationalist groups.

The government is backed by troops from neighbouring Ethiopia, who are deeply unpopular with many Somalis.

More than three million people in Somalia - almost half the population - are in acute need of food or medical aid, according to the UN.