An armed gang abducted an Italian woman from a village in southeast Kenya, shooting and wounding five residents in the raid, police said Wednesday.
“The attackers fired indiscriminately at residents” before kidnapping the 23-year-old, who worked as a volunteer for an Italian charity, during the attack after dark on Tuesday at Chakama, a small village in the coastal Kilifi county, police said in a statement.
Three children were among those injured, with one, a 10-year-old boy, shot in the eye, according to police.
The wounded have been taken to hospital and police have been “deployed to track down the criminals”.
Italy’s foreign ministry named the victim as Silvia Romano.
Africa Milele Onlus, the small Italian charity for which Romano was volunteering, posted a statement on its website saying: “There are no words to comment on what is happening. Silvia, we are all with you.”
Ronald Kazungu, a Chakama resident who witnessed Romano’s abduction, said the gang had come to the village looking for “the foreigner”.
“Six men came asking for the foreigner. I told them she had gone (out). They began arguing, saying they had seen her in the house. It was then that I showed them where she was,” he said.
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