Two Spanish aid workers freed in Somalia

Two Spanish aid workers kidnapped
almost two years ago in Kenya and then
held in Somalia have been freed, their
employer Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
said Thursday.

Montserrat Serra and Blanca Thiebaut, 40
and 30 respectively at the time of their
kidnapping from the Dadaab refugee
complex near the border with Somalia in
October 2011, are both "safe and healthy",
MSF said.

"Both are safe and healthy and keen to join
their loved ones as soon as possible," the
medical charity said, without disclosing
when they were released or how.
MSF said it would give no further details
before a press conference scheduled in
Madrid on Friday.

"Once again, MSF strongly condemns this
attack on humanitarian workers who were
in Dadaab offering lifesaving medical
assistance to thousands of refugees," the
charity said.
Serra and Thiebaut, both logisticians, were
seized by armed men in the Ifo camp in
Dadaab, where they were working on the
construction of a hospital, and immediately
driven across the border.

Kenyan police said they had been taken by
members of Somalia's Islamist Shebab
group, but no group has actually claimed
the kidnapping.
MSF, which at the time of the kidnapping
had 49 foreign and 343 local staff in
Dadaab, reduced its activity there to a
minimum.
The world's largest refugee complex,
Dadaab is home to some 450,000 refugees,
the vast majority of whom have fled
drought and war in Somalia.

The abduction of the Spaniards followed
the kidnapping of a French woman and a
British woman from the Kenyan coast near
the Somali border.

Briton Judith Tebbutt, in her late fifties, was
seized
from a remote Kenyan resort on
September 11, 2011 by armed men who
killed her husband David. She was released
in March 2012 after being held for more
than six months, reportedly after her son
paid a ransom.
Marie Dedieu, 66 and partially paralysed,
was seized from her beachfront home in
the Lamu archipelago on October 1, 2011.

She was reported dead later the same
month, with French officials saying the
death was probably due to her having
been deprived of essential medication by
her kidnappers.

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