NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct. 14 (UPI) -- Kenyan police said they were searching Friday for two Spanish aid workers kidnapped from a vast refugee camp near the Somali border.
Air and land searches were under way for the women.
Police said the women's driver was shot and wounded and thrown from their vehicle.
Britain's Daily Telegraph reported Leo Nyongesa, the regional police commander in the area, said there were "all indications that that [the women] are on the other side" of the border in Somalia.
The two women, aid workers for Doctors Without Borders, were kidnapped by gunmen Thursday from one of four camps in Dadaab, where 480,000 Somalis fleeing war and famine in their country have taken refuge.
Kenya police had said Thursday they believed the Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab was responsible.
But security sources said Friday it appeared bandits, not al-Shabaab, kidnapped the women, and Marthe Everard, the World Health Organization's representative for Somalia, said sources close to the Islamic group had denied that it was responsible.
The Telegraph said Dadaab and the 60-mile area between the camps and the Somali border to the east have been targeted by armed bandits who prey on refugees trying to get to the camps.
Emmanuel Nyabera, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency, said non-essential humanitarian aid missions have been canceled during a review of security measures. Further restrictions on the humanitarian work could have a major impact on efforts to assist the refugees, Nyabera said.
Before the kidnappings, the Telegraph said, Dadaab had been viewed as the safest place to treat about 1,000 Somalis a day who cross the border. The famine in their country has been worsened by al-Shabaab's refusal to allow Western aid into its territory.
The kidnappings mark the third abduction of Europeans in Kenya in less than a month -- two were in coastal resorts -- and in all three cases Somali gunmen are suspected.
