Gunmen who snatched a disabled 66-year-old French woman from her beachfront home in a prized Kenyan resort have taken her to neighbouring war-torn Somalia, officials said yesterday.

With Kenyan forces obliged to stop their pursuit at the border and officials suspecting Somalia’s Al Qaeda-inspired Shebab, chances dimmed of a quick release for the woman, named as Marie Dedieu.

Officials said mediators have been sent to Somalia in a bid to secure the woman’s release but admitted talks could be lengthy.

Western countries rushed to update their travel advisories and Kenya battled to save its vital tourism industry following the kidnapping early Saturday, less than a month after a British tourist was abducted from the same area and her husband killed.

“She’s already in Somalia. I can confirm that,” said Stephen Ikua, the district commissioner for Lamu, the idyllic archipelago on Kenya’s Indian Ocean coast where Ms Dedieu, who uses a wheelchair since an accident several years ago, lived.

“It must have been Al-Shebab,” he told AFP by phone, referring to the Somali insurgent group which has been battling the Western-backed Somali government for years. A Kenyan government statement said Ms Dedieu was taken from her home on Manda island by “10 heavily armed Somali bandits.”

Kenya said its forces gave chase, dispatching a helicopter and coastguard vessels to catch the kidnappers as they made their way by speedboat to Ras Kamboni in southern Somalia.

“In the ensuing shoot-out... several of the abductors were injured but managed to enter” Ras Kamboni, the statement said, without offering any details on Ms Dedieu’s condition.

Abdul Alim, tourism manager at Peponi, one of the foremost hotels in Shela, and a long-time friend of Ms Dedieu, said the coastguard were ill-equipped for such operations.

He said Ms Dedieu’s staff had told him the kidnappers had dragged their employer over sand and stones and then “dumped her in the boat like a sack.”