Three aid workers released by Somali gunmen

Oct 3, 2009, 14:22 GMT

Nairobi - Three international aid workers kidnapped by Somali gunmen in a cross-border raid in Kenya have been released after over two months in captivity, an international aid agency said.

An official from the aid agency, who asked that the agency remain unnamed, told the German Press Agency dpa that the three had been freed but declined to release any more information.

It was not clear if a ransom was paid for the three workers, whose nationalities and identities have been closely guarded.

The released workers were reportedly being flown to the Kenyan capital Nairobi and were said to be in good health.

Militiamen seized the aid workers in Mandera, near the Kenya- Somalia border in northeast Kenya, in July.

Aid workers and journalists are common targets for kidnap and ransom in Somalia, which has not had an effective central government since 1991 and is bogged down in a bloody insurgency.

Guns, food and refugees often slip across the porous border between the two nations and the kidnapping of the trio was the second cross-border raid in under a year.

Two Italian nuns were seized in November from the Kenyan town of El Wak then taken over the border. They were released in February.