Kidnapped French woman dies in Somalia

GlobalPost

A disabled French woman who was kidnapped from a Kenyan island resort and taken to neighboring Somalia has died, the French Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.

The BBC reported that a statement from the French ministry said the kidnappers of the woman, Marie Dedieu, who suffered from poor health, probably refused to provide her with medicine.

The French Foregin Ministry reportedly sent medicine to Somalia, but it was refused by her kidnappers.

But French officials said they were “unable to determine the date nor the circumstances" of her death.

The 66-year-old Dedieu had been held in Somalia since October 1.

GlobalPost's Tristan McConnell reported that Dedieu was taken from her rented home on the island of Manda just across a narrow channel from the popular coastal tourist town of Shela on Lamu Island.

Last Thursday, two Spanish aid workers working for the international medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were seized at gunpoint inside Dadaab, Kenya's largest refugee camp.

Read more on GlobalPost:

Kenya: 2 Spanish aid workers kidnapped

Kenya Kidnappings, new Kenyan port threaten historic Lamu

Somalia's Al Shabaab militant group warns of revenge attacks against Kenya
 

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