Somali police exchanged fire with a group of armed men who kidnapped two foreign aid workers in the semi- autonomous Puntland region Wednesday, hours after they were taken captive.

"I heard heavy gunfire between the policemen and the kidnappers. I don't know whether the kidnappers were captured or whether the aid workers were hurt," Sadia Ibrahim, who witnessed the clashes in the town of Bossasso in the north-eastern region.

MSF evacuated its international staff from the area, a spokeswoman said, after Spanish doctor Mercedes Garcia and Argentinian nurse Pilar Bauza were manhandled from their car earlier Wednesday by the gun-toting abductors.

MSF spokeswoman Susan Sandars could not say what condition the women were in nor if they had been released.

"The kidnappers, armed with guns, blocked a minibus carrying these two ladies and then soon transferred the aid workers to their vehicle and drove away," Fartuun Saadak, a witness, said earlier.

French journalist Gwen Le Gouil was released Monday after being kidnapped in Puntland for over a week.

Lawless Somalia was plunged into anarchy in 1991 after the toppling of dictator Mohammed Siad Barre, allowing banditry and piracy to fester.

North-eastern Puntland is somewhat more stable than southern Somalia but attacks on foreigners has been on the rise.