Red Cross Office in Somalia Seized; Staff Feared Held

Gunmen took over the Red Cross office in Somalia’s capital today and were apparently holding its staff hostage, creating another major obstacle to the evacuation of foreigners from the embattled country.

In Geneva, the International Committee for the Red Cross said it did not know who attacked the office--Somali government troops, rebels seeking the end of President Mohamed Siad Barre’s 21 years in power, or bandits.

An estimated 500 people have been killed in six days of fighting this week, many of them civilians caught in the cross fire of running battles through the city’s streets.

A Red Cross spokeswoman said a Red Cross delegate in Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, was talking to the humanitarian agency’s Geneva headquarters by telephone when he was forced to break off the conversation.

He reported that “armed elements” had entered the building, the spokeswoman said. “I have a gun against my head, so I can’t talk any more,” she quoted him as saying.

The spokeswoman said there had been no further contact with the 10-member delegation in Mogadishu.

The rebel United Somali Congress has demanded that the Red Cross oversee any evacuation of foreigners from the capital, saying the use of military planes or ships by Italy, the United States or other Western nations would be taken as an unwarranted intervention.

About 500 foreigners are believed to remain in Mogadishu, including about 85 Americans. There have been no reports of deaths among them in nearly a week of heavy fighting.