Somali gunmen kidnap cleric in Kenya camp

ource: Reuters

GARISSA, Kenya, May 25 (Reuters) - Four hooded gunmen kidnapped a Somali cleric seeking refuge in a Kenyan camp on Monday, the man's neighbour at the refugee camp said. Abdikadir Abdi, 60, was seized while sleeping outside his makeshift shelter at Ifo camp in north-eastern Kenya and was bundled into a vehicle that sped toward the Somalia border. "The incident has shocked the refugee community," Hodan Abdi, a neighbour of the kidnapped man, told Reuters. "It happened at about two o'clock in the morning. We fear for our lives." Abdi said the kidnapped man was an outspoken cleric who had criticised the activities of Somalia's al Shabaab insurgents in a series of sermons at a mosque in the camp. Ann Campel, an official of the U.N.'s refugee agency at the camp, said details of the kidnap were still sketchy. Somali gunmen have crossed the remote border into Kenya and kidnapped two Italian nuns and five Kenyan government workers in separate incidents. They have since been freed. Monday's attack is the first kidnap of a Somali national. (Reporting by Daud Yussuf; writing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura; editing by Robert Woodward)