Ailing Frenchwoman apparently died in captivity

NAIROBI, Kenya - France said Wednesday that a cancer-stricken quadriplegic Frenchwoman kidnapped off a Kenyan resort island appears to have died in captivity in Somalia, prompting Kenya to call the death an act of terror against the East African nation and France.

Kenya said that it sent about 1,600 troops into Somalia last weekend to hunt al-Shabab extremists because of the kidnapping of the French woman and three other Europeans from its country over the last six weeks. The nation's tourism minister, Najib Balala, said that the invasion was meant to push Islamist extremists away from Kenya's tourist destinations.

"Security has been upped in the country, and we made sure that we don't entertain any unscrupulous characters in our country," Balala said.

Somalian gunmen snatched Marie Dedieu in the middle of the night from her resort island home near Lamu on Oct. 1. The wheelchair-bound woman suffered from cancer and required special medications several times a day, medicine her captors did not take with them.

French officials said Dedieu's state of health and the fact that her kidnappers "probably refused to give her the medication we sent her" likely led to the death. The foreign ministry said her death had not been absolutely confirmed but was the most likely situation.

"We are so, so sad," said Abdullah Fadhil, the property manager at Dedieu's residence in Lamu. "We have lost a mother of this village. We have not lost a foreigner. We have lost a mother of the community. We wish she would be alive, but because she has been sick and I know that the captors cannot give her the care she requires ... she has been very weak."

France's Foreign Ministry said that unspecified "contacts" told French officials that Dedieu had died, but the date and circumstances of her death were not immediately known.

The Kenyan government offered its condolences and said Dedieu died while in al-Shabab captivity. Kenya maintains al-Shabab is behind the recent kidnappings, though some analysts have instead blamed pirates or criminals.

After a weekly cabinet meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy, Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Dedieu's death "isn't totally confirmed but is more than probable."