Somali police shoot two suspects in kidnappings of French journalists, MSF workers

Police in northern Somalia shot dead two suspected kidnappers and one officer was killed during a heavy gunbattle Thursday, witnesses and officials said.

The two men shot in the semiautonomous region of Puntland were suspected of involvement in the recent kidnappings of a French journalist and two aid workers from Spain and Argentina, police said. All three hostages have been released.

Muqtar Ahmed, a local resident, said police raided a house where the kidnappers were belived to have been hiding.

Local government official Yusuf Bide said the police found the kidnappers through a tip-off. He said it was the same gang who last month abducted a French cameraman in one incident and in another a Spaniard and an Argentinean working for medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres.

A police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said police had been on the gang's trail for several days. A gunfight broke out after they surrounded the house and several of the suspected kidnappers escaped after clan members came to their aid, he said.

Puntland's police chief, Col. Abdiaziz Said Gamey vowed to pursue the gang until all of them were brought to trial.

"We have captured several people, some of them gunmen and others who wanted to help them sneak out of the house," he said. "One policeman was killed and six others were wounded during the gunbattle."

Puntland is generally considered safer than the war-wracked south, where government troops and their Ethiopian allies are battling an Islamic insurgency and thousands of Somalis have been killed this year. But in recent months the two northern regions have seen an upsurge in piracy and kidnappings, and tensions between the two have increased over a border dispute.

Impoverished Somalia has not had a functioning government since warlords overthrew dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in a 1991 coup and then turned their clan-based militias on each other.