Somali gunman kidnap French woman on Kenya resort island

Somali gunmen have snatched a disabled Frenchwoman from a Kenyan resort island after a shootout with Kenya's navy, prompting France and Britain to extend their travel warnings to cover Kenya's northern coast. The 66-year-old wheelchair-bound woman, was taken from her home on the archipelago of Lamu in east Kenya on Saturday by "10 heavily armed Somali bandits," a Kenyan government statement said, adding they were "suspected" members of Somalia's Shebab Islamist rebel group. It was the second attack on foreigners in one month in this part of Kenya near the border with war-torn Somalia. France and Britain swiftly issued new travel advice, warning travellers to avoid not only lawless Somalia but the nearby coastline as well. This is a blow for tourism which is a key foreign currency earner for Kenya, East Africa's largest economy. The Lamu archipelago is often included in package holidays to Kenya, with game-viewing safaris offered in some of the country's national parks. The French consulate in Nairobi issued a formal warning to prospective visitors to avoid the archipelago and the region up to the Somali border. Britain also issued tougher travel advice for Kenya, warning its nationals against all but essential travel to a long stretch of the coast up to the Somali border. "We advise against all but essential travel to coastal areas within 150 km (93 miles) of the Somali border, following two attacks by armed gangs in small boats against beach resorts in the Lamu area," the new travel advice says, according to a foreign ministry statement. "Beach-front accommodation in that area and boats off the coast are vulnerable." Previously, London advised against all but essential travel to Kenyan coastal areas within 60 kilometres of the Somali border. Following the kidnapping on Saturday, Kenyan "security forces swung into immediate action and pursued the abductors" making their way to the town of Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia by speed boat. Nairobi dispatched a helicopter and coastguard vessels which caught up with and surrounded the fleeing gunmen. "In the ensuing shoot-out between the abductors and the Kenya Navy, several of the abductors were injured but managed to enter" Ras Kamboni, said the government statement which offered no details on the abducted woman's condition. Shebab rebels control large swathes of territory in southern Somalia, but Ras Kamboni, a former rebel bastion near the Kenyan border, is not currently under the control of any single group. Somalia's weak, Western-backed government is still largely confined to the capital, Mogadishu. The Kenyan government said in a statement Saturday that "every effort is being made to rescue the victim", while Tourism Minister Najib Balala promised security will be beefed up. The woman, identified by local sources as Marie Dedieu, was taken from her home on Manda island, the government said, separated by an idyllic lagoon from the celebrity-packed, luxury resort isle of Lamu. "We fear for her health," French foreign affairs spokesman Bernard Valero said in Paris, adding the woman who was retired and had been living in Kenya for about 15 years, was on a medical regimen when abducted. Her companion, John Lepapa, a 39-year-old Kenyan who was present during the attack, said there were six assailants on land and four waiting in the boat, and "they all had guns". "He shoot at me when he passed this window," he recounted. Locals said the kidnap victim was well known in the area, where she spends much of the year. The kidnappers did not take her wheelchair with them. Ernest Munyi, head of police for the Coast province, told AFP the abductors had forced a man working for the Frenchwoman and living nearby to take them to her. Lamu, with its immaculate white sand beaches on the Indian Ocean, is one of Kenya's most prized tourist venues despite its proximity to war-torn Somalia. There are no cars on the island, only donkeys, and Lamu Old Town is the oldest and best-preserved Swahili settlement in East Africa, according to the UNESCO cultural agency, which declared it a heritage site in 2001. On September 11, gunmen attacked a British couple in their fifties -- Judith and David Tebbutt -- on holiday north of Lamu. David Tebbutt was shot dead and his wife was captured. She is believed to have been sold to pirates now holding her in central Somalia. Somalia has been lawless for two decades after plunging into a bloody civil war with the 1991 ouster of president Mohamed Siad Barre. A Briton kidnapped in southern Somalia in 2008, environmental researcher Murray Watson, is still missing, and a French secret service agent has been held in Somalia for more than two years.