MOGADISHU, 20 March 2003 — Six unidentified armed Americans, believed to be American Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, have apprehended a presumed Yemeni national, suspected of having links to Al-Qaeda, from a hospital in Somalia’s capital and flew him out of the country, witnesses said yesterday.

On Tuesday, the six men, accompanied by members of a Somali militia group, took the man from Kaysaney hospital. Staff named him only as Issa and said he was carrying a South African passport. “The Americans with a Somali translator came with details of the man including his photograph and fingerprints,” a nurse at Kaysaney hospital said.

Hassan Muhammad, information officer in the prime minister’s office, said Somalia’s transitional government (TNG) was not involved in the arrest. The TNG controls only parts of Mogadishu and pockets of the rest of the war-torn country. Areas outside its control are in the hands of rival warlords.

Hassan said the Yemeni national was captured by militia loyal to one of the country’s several warlords at a hospital north of Mogadishu. He was then handed over to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents waiting at a nearby airport. “We were informed by hospital officials that one man of Yemeni nationality was arrested at the Kaysaney hospital in the northern part of Mogadishu,” Hassan told Reuters by telephone.

“He was arrested by the militia of the warlord Dheere, and taken to a nearby airport where about four or five American FBI agents were waiting in an aircraft and took him away.” Hassan said he did not know the name of the Yemeni national, but sources in the capital had informed him that the man was suspected to be linked to Al-Qaeda.

Somali officials said the Yemeni national had been kidnapped by militias and wounded in a gunbattle as police tried to rescue him from the kidnappers. “Police rescued him but he was wounded in the process and he went to the Kaysaney hospital, where militia of the warlord Dheere took him and handed him over to some white men, who were either Israelis or American,” he said.

According to several sources in Mogadishu, the detained man is thought to have links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network. The United States has no diplomatic representation in Somalia. The US Embassy in Nairobi declined to comment on the reports.

In Nairobi, anti-terrorism unit police chief Malhew Kabetu said “there have been arrests” but declined to provide further details, or to say whether any of those arrests had taken place in Somalia. In November last year, terrorists presumed to be linked to Al-Qaeda blew up a hotel used by Israeli tourists near the Kenyan port city of Mombassa, killing 18 people — including themselves — and tried in vain to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet.

Sources in Mogadishu said more US agents arrived there on Tuesday. “Those who arrested the Yemeni arrived from Nairobi a day earlier and their plane stayed overnight at Aisaley airport which is not far from the hospital,” a Somali militiaman at the airport said. “The Yemeni was then flown to Nairobi,” he added. Newspaper reports in Mogadishu said local police had a few days earlier foiled an attempt to kidnap Issa, which left the man wounded and requiring hospital treatment.

Meanwhile, at least six people were killed and 11 wounded when two rival Somali groups clashed in the Medina suburb of southwest Mogadishu on Tuesday, witnesses and hospital sources said. Three of the dead were civilians struck by stray bullets during the fighting, which was still going on Tuesday afternoon.