Amanda Lindhout, a freelance journalist from Alberta, was abducted at gunpoint near Mogadishu, the Somali capital. A friend of Lindhout was also kidnapped along with a Somali translator.

Lindhout had been based in Baghdad, but recently had been touring Africa to put together reports for French television. Lindhout was hoping to sell her stories to Canadian television stations as well. "I work with a team of professionals that I have hired locally, and I have packaged together several 2.5–min reports from Ethiopia and Kenya," Lindhout wrote. She also wrote, "Next week I am going to Somalia to report on the deteriorating security situation as well as the food crisis, which has affected 2.6 million there." It is unclear as to whether Lindhout's Somali translator was actually kidnapped or only present during the abductions. A primary school teacher in Elasha, Fatuma Ali, told Reuters, "We heard that unknown gunmen abducted two foreign journalists, a white man and a white woman."

Unfortunately, in Mogadishu Islamists are engaged in guerilla warfare and the abduction of journalists and humanitarian workers is not uncommon. Authorities are expecting ransom demands, since this is the usual protocol in such cases.

25 August 2008