Mogadishu, (insidesomalia.org) two aid workers working for United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been kidnapped by gunmen on Tuesday in an area between Bu'aleh and Sakow in the Middle Jubba region of Somalia, say local leader in Bu'aleh.

The aid workers; a British national and a Kenyan were kidnapped after the gunmen ambushed their car firing gun shots, said a witness.

One of the aid workers, the British worker was injured in a gun fight as their body guards tried to fight against the attackers.

"This was a barbaric attack against aid workers" said Abdi Farah, a resident in Saakow district.

The aid workers were attacked by six armed men

Aid workers, notably foreigners, have been increasingly targeted across the restive Horn of Africa nation in recent months.

A German aid worker was briefly held hostage by gunmen in northern Somalia in mid-February, and three staff of Medicines sans Frontiers (MSF - Doctors without Borders) was killed by a roadside bomb in January in the southern town of Kismayo, causing the international NGO to pull its foreign staff out of Somalia.

Late last year, two MSF workers were abducted in the northern region of Puntland days after a French cameraman was also snatched. All three were eventually released unharmed.

Top international aid agencies warned yesterday that war-scarred Somalia has become too dangerous for its workers to help more than one million civilians living rough, as fresh fighting erupted.

"There are now more than one million internally displaced people in Somalia. Intense conflict in Mogadishu continues to force an average of 20,000 people from their homes each month," they added.

The humanitarian relief efforts have been exacerbated by lawlessness and rising insecurity, it warned.

"Attacks on, and killings of aid workers, the looting of relief supplies, and a lack of respect for international humanitarian law by all parties have left two million Somalis in need of basic humanitarian assistance."

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when rival warlords overthrew the dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and then turned on each other. More than a million of its citizens depend on foreign aid. There have been a number of attacks on aid workers in previous months, including kidnappings and land mines that have blown up their vehicles.

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