Red Cross nurse abducted in Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia — Gunmen stormed into the International Committee of the Red Cross compound in Somalia’s capital and abducted a German nurse on its staff, the aid group said late Wednesday.
The kidnapping of the woman, identified by a colleague as Sonja Nientiet, in Mogadishu was the latest in a series of targeted attacks on aid workers in the long-chaotic Horn of Africa nation. It came a day after a Somali employee with the World Health Organization was fatally shot by two men who approached her in a busy market in the capital.
The Red Cross said it was evacuating 10 non-Somali staff members to Kenya and “winding down” activities in parts of Somalia outside the capital.
The nurse was abducted despite the presence of several security guards, police Capt. Mohamed Hussein said. He said the guards had been arrested.
“We believe that at the heart of this matter is a disgruntled former employee for ICRC who is behind the abduction,” Abdulaziz Hildhiban, spokesman for Somalia’s internal security ministry, said Thursday.
“We are deeply concerned about the safety of our colleague,” Daniel O’Malley, the deputy head of the Red Cross delegation in Somalia, said in a statement. “She is a nurse who was working every day to save lives and improve the health of some of Somalia’s most vulnerable people.”
Doctor who helped CIA still in prison
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s foreign ministry said Thursday that no “deal” is in the works between Islamabad and Washington for the release of a physician who helped the United States track down Osama bin Laden in 2011.
The comment by the ministry’s spokesman, Mohammad Faisal, came days after Pakistani authorities moved Dr. Shakil Afridi from a prison in the northwestern city of Peshawar to an undisclosed location, triggering speculation about his possible release.
Afridi has been behind bars since 2012, when a court convicted him and sentenced him to 33 years in prison over ties with militants.
He was never formally convicted of helping the CIA find bin Laden, which led to the May 2011 Navy SEALs operation that killed the al-Qaida mastermind behind the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks in the U.S.
Washington seeks Afridi’s release, but Islamabad insists that he violated the country’s laws.
U.S. complains lasers aimed at planes
The U.S. has issued a formal complaint to the Chinese government over the use of high-grade lasers near the military base in Djibouti that were directed at aircraft and resulted in minor eye injuries to two American pilots, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman Dana White said the U.S. is confident that Chinese nationals are responsible for the use of the lasers, which targeted aircraft on several occasions in the past few weeks. White said the incidents represent a serious threat to U.S. airmen and that the U.S. has asked China to investigate the incidents.
She estimated that there have been fewer than 10 laser incidents in recent weeks, and the Pentagon sought the formal complaint because of the injuries and the growing number of instances.
Marine Lt. Col. Chris Logan, a Pentagon spokesman, said reports from pilots indicate that on three occasions the lasers were military grade and came from the Chinese base nearby.
The Chinese recently built a base just a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, the U.S. military installation in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. It is China’s first overseas military base and was manned last year.
Raid in Mexico finds 113 police posers
MEXICO CITY — Prosecutors and soldiers raided a local police force in central Mexico and found that 113 of the 185 officers weren’t policemen at all.
The Public Safety Department in the central state of Puebla said late Wednesday that the 113 are facing charges equivalent to impersonating an officer. Some had presumably paid to avoid vetting and registration procedures.
The state government took over policing duties in the town of San Martin Texmelucan.
The state interior secretary said the town government had lost control and could no longer guarantee public safety. Diodoro Carrasco cited multiple instances in which bagged, bound or dismembered bodies had been left on the town’s streets.
A Section on 05/04/2018