Irish aid worker kidnapped in Darfur

By Andrew Heavens

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Armed men seized two female aid workers, one Irish and one Ugandan, in Sudan's Darfur region on Friday, their employer said, the third kidnapping of foreign aid staff in the territory in four months.

The six men took the women, both working for the Irish aid group GOAL, from their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum in the evening, the aid group told Reuters. A Sudanese guard was also taken but later released, it added.

The recent surge of kidnappings has shocked humanitarian groups in Darfur, where abductions of foreign workers were almost unheard of before this year.

Aid organisations say they have faced growing antagonism in Darfur since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president in March to face charges of orchestrating crimes against humanity in the region.

GOAL chief executive John O'Shea named the kidnapped women as Hilda Kawuki, 42, from Uganda, and Sharon Commins, 32, from Dublin.

"We don't know who took them. There are so many splinter groups in the area you'd only be guessing," O'Shea told Reuters. "The local police force are in charge of trying to track them down. We have never had a kidnapping before. We are just hoping and praying that we can get them back."

The tactics used by the men, targeting a foreign aid compound after dark, kidnapping a guard and then releasing him, were similar to those used in earlier abductions in Darfur, said a U.N. source, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A Canadian and a French woman from France-based Aide Medicale Internationale were kidnapped at gunpoint in Ed el Fursan in South Darfur in early April, but were later released unharmed.