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AFP
Armed men attacked where Silvia Romano was staying on Tuesday
The Kenyan police offered a $ 10,000 reward (£ 7,600) to help find an Italian aid worker and the three men accused of kidnapping her on Tuesday.
Silvia Romano was captured by gunmen in a small rural hotel in Kilifi County, in the south-east of the country.
Five people, including three children, were wounded in the attack and taken to the hospital.
Police said that they "were doing everything possible to save" Mrs. Romano and arrest the kidnappers.
It is unclear whether the men who kidnapped the 23-year-old volunteer are members of a local gang seeking ransom or are linked to militant Islamist group al-Shabab.
The police posted photos of the three suspects on Twitter, describing them as "armed and dangerous".
Twenty people have already been arrested in connection with the kidnapping, the AFP news agency reported, citing police chief Joseph Boinett.
History of kidnapping
Romano, who works for the Italian charity Africa Milele Onlus, is the first foreign kidnapped in Kenya since the country experienced a wave of kidnappings that threatened the resumption of tourism in 2011.
Al-Shabab is believed to be responsible for the murder of a British man and the kidnapping of his wife from a resort island in 2011.
A few weeks later, a French disabled French woman was taken from her home in the Lamu Archipelago and died while she was in captivity.
Two Spanish aid workers were kidnapped the same year by suspected jihadist gunmen from the Dadaab refugee camp near the Somali border.
They were released 21 months later.
