Two French officials kidnapped in Mogadishu

Paris- Gunmen stormed into a hotel in the Somali capital of Mogadishu Tuesday and kidnapped two French security advisors on a mission to train Somali government forces, according to the French foreign ministry.

• While the foreign ministry said the pair were "French government employees," they did not specify the state agency or department they were attached to.
• The two men were snatched from the Hotel Sahafi in the Somali capital.
  
  According to hotel staff, the two men registered themselves as French nationals when they checked in at the hotel desk five days ago.
  
  The hotel manager said that the two men had told him that they were journalists. A senior Somali official, who spoke to the AFP on condition of anonymity, said the two had been training the country's intelligence services.
• 
  ‘The abduction was over in a few minutes’
  
  Describing Tuesday’s abductions, the hotel manager at the Sahafi told Reuters that "several gunmen” had entered the building, “pointed guns at the guards and went into the hotel rooms, where they took away the two French nationals."
  
  “The abduction was over in a few minutes” and took place around 8am, said Stephanie Braquegais, a FRANCE 24 correspondent in Mogadishu. She said that armed men arrived in two vehicles and blocked the road leading to the hotel.
  
  “According to the hotel manager, they disarmed the security guards before rushing directly to the two persons’ room,” she said.
  
  She added: “The abductors left with only one vehicle, a pickup, leaving a small broken-down Toyota at the scene, which was taken away by the Somali police a few minutes later.”
  
  Raging insurgency
  
  Mogadishu is regularly rocked by car bombs and mortar attacks because of the violent internal power struggle in this impoverished nation in the Horn of Africa. Somalia has been in a state of civil war since 1991.
  
  On May 7, Islamic extremists from the Shabaab (literally “youth” in Arabic) and the Hizbul Islam militias launched a bloody offensive against the United Nations-supported government of Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who was elected president last January.
  
  Pro-government forces are struggling to contain the raging insurgency, and more than 200,000 Mogadishu inhabitants have left the city, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
• Strategic areas in the capital, including the presidential palace, the harbour and the airport, are protected by soldiers from the African Union Mission peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
  
  The entire southern part of the country is controlled by insurgents.
  
  Foreigners are known to stay regularly at the Sahafi, a hotel located in the southern districts of Mogadishu, near a strategic road leading to the presidential palace. In 2005, a BBC producer was shot dead in front of the hotel.
  
  A Canadian journalist and an Australian photographer abducted 25 kilometres west of Mogadishu in August 2008 are still detained. Four employees from a French NGO, abducted in November, are also still being held hostage.
• Ennaharonline/ France24