Mogadishu/Paris - A group of armed Somali men have kidnapped six foreigners - four aid workers and two pilots - near the town of Dusamareb in central Somalia on Wednesday, the French government confirmed on Wednesday.

In a statement issued in Paris, the foreign ministry said that two French citizens working for a French NGO were among those abducted.

The Belgian State Department had said earlier that one of the kidnap victims was a Belgian national.

Mohamoud Dhaqane, a businessman in Dusamareb, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that the six were seized by a convoy of armed gunmen at an airstrip.

French charity Action Against Hunger (ACF) said that four of its expatriate employees and two Kenyan pilots flying a European Commission-chartered flight were taken.

"According to our information, they were taken by armed men as they reached the airport with a view to returning to Nairobi," ACF said in a statement on its website.

The seized workers were whisked away in vehicles, ACF said, adding that it had set up crisis rooms in both Paris and Nairobi.

Aid workers have increasingly been targeted for killings and abductions in Somalia this year, with a bloody Islamist insurgency showing no sign of letting up. (dpa)