Suspected Islamic insurgents kidnapped a Swede and a Dane on Saturday in a town in southwestern Somalia, residents and Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said.

The suspected Islamic insurgents seized control of Hudur, about 180 miles northwest of the capital, Mogadishu, and kidnapped the foreigners, said Qamar Adam, a resident who works for a local non-governmental organization.

Adam said she did not witness the kidnapping, but some of the suspected insurgents openly told residents they had kidnapped the foreigners.

Sweden’s Foreign Ministry said a Swede and a Dane had been kidnapped in Somalia. Ministry spokesman Andre Mkandawire said it had received the information from Sweden’s rescue services agency, which was not immediately available to comment.

It was not immediately clear what the Swede and Dane were doing in Somalia.

Kidnappings have been on the rise in Somalia, which has not had a functioning government for more than 15 years.

In the past week alone, five people have been abducted. A German couple, their son and a French yacht captain were kidnapped Monday off the Gulf of Aden and pirates were demanding a $1 million ransom. A Somali employee of the U.N. refugee agency was taken June 21 outside Mogadishu.

Radio operator Mohamed Adawe said the two foreigners arrived in Hudur on Friday.

Another resident, Abdi Kerow, said one person was killed and five others wounded in battles between the suspected insurgents and government soldiers.

In recent months, Islamic insurgents have briefly seized control of a handful of towns in central and southern Somalia, including Hudur and Belet Weyne. The attacks are usually seen as a show of strength rather than a strategy to reclaim territory they lost in December 2006 when Ethiopian troops moved into Somalia to back the weak transitional government.

Somalia has not had an effective central government since 1991, when warlords overthrew longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre and turned on each other.

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Associated Press writer Stephan Nasstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.