Agencies/Mogadishu/Nairobi
Four foreign aid workers kidnapped from Kenya’s Dadaab refugee camp returned safely yesterday to Nairobi, tired but smiling after being released overnight in southern Somalia following a short gunfight.
Released foreign aid workers from the Norwegian Refugee Council (from left) Steven Dennis, Qurat-Ul-Ain Sadazai, Astrid Sehl and Glenn Costes wave upon arriving at the Wilson airport in Nairobi yesterday
“We are happy to be alive, we are happy this has ended,” said Canadian-Pakistan national Qurat-Ul-Ain Sadazai as she and colleagues - from Canada, Norway and the Philippines - arrived in Nairobi by Kenyan military helicopter.
The two men and two women with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) looked exhausted and were covered in dust after their 3-day ordeal, but managed a weary smile to reporters before they boarded buses and left the airport.
NRC said in a statement it was “relieved and pleased” at their release, naming them respectively as Steven Dennis, 37, Astrid Sehl, 33, Glenn Costes, 40 and Sadazai, 38.
Costes limped from a bullet wound to the leg, but the four appeared to be otherwise in good health after arriving from the southern Somali border town of Dhobley, where they been freed earlier yesterday.
“They were released by a joint force of Somali and Kenyan forces, during which one of the kidnappers was killed,” said Kenyan army spokesman Cyrus Oguna. Three others were arrested.
Mohamed Dini Adan, a Somali military commander in Dhobley, an area under control of Somali forces allied to Kenya, said the army had stopped the “kidnappers who were trying to hide and sneak past the army.”
Somali forces heard reports the gunmen were heading for a dense remote forest some 25km from Dhobley, and rushed to hunt them down.
“Thanks to God we foiled their aims of taking the hostages into the forest,” said Somali General Osmail Sahardid, who led the operation.
Residents in Dhobley said the local Ras Kamboni militia - commanded by a former powerful Islamist warlord now allied to Kenya - were also involved in the rescue. Kenyan security forces scrambled military helicopters and aircraft after gunmen attacked the NRC convoy at around midday on Friday in Dadaab, some 100km from Somalia, killing a Kenyan driver and wounding two others.
However, the aid workers’ vehicle seized by the gunmen was found abandoned a few hours after the attack, and fears grew the gang had escaped with the hostages through the remote scrubland across the porous border into lawless Somalia.
Kenya, which sent troops into southern Somalia in October to attack Al Qaeda-linked Shebaab insurgents, has troops some 120km deep into Somalia. However, the forces control only pockets of the vast territory.
“We are thankful to know that our four colleagues have been found and safely returned to Kenya. This is a day of relief for us and for the families of the abducted,” the NRC chief Elisabeth Rasmusson said in a statement.
“Our thoughts go to the family of the NRC driver, Abdi Ali, who was killed during the attack on Friday, and to our two local employees who are currently undergoing treatment in hospital for injuries inflicted in the incident.
“The attack in Dadaab will stand as a tragic incident in NRC’s history.”
The kidnapping was the latest in a series of attacks in Dadaab, where gunmen last October seized two Spaniards working for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). They are still being held hostage in Somalia.
The abduction of the Spaniards was one of the incidents that spurred Kenya to send troops and tanks into Somalia to fight the hardline Shebaab whom Nairobi blames for abductions and cross-border raids.
The Shebaab still control large parts of southern Somalia, despite recent losses to African Union troops, government forces and Ethiopian soldiers, who have wrested several key bases from the insurgents.
Kenya PM rejects pullout
Kenya will not pull troops out from Somalia until security is restored, Prime Minister Raila Odinga said yesterday, a day after 17 people died in the worst attack in a decade that he blamed on Somali Islamists.
Speaking in the eastern Kenyan garrison town of Garissa, where masked gunmen on Sunday hurled grenades into two churches before firing guns into the congregation, Odinga offered a defiant message to the Al-Qaeda linked Shebaab.
“Surrender is not an option for us, because if we leave Somalia, anarchy will set in which will spill over the borders,” Odinga told reporters.
“Kenya will stand together even as Shebaab acts in desperation... Shebaab are reacting to the progress made by our forces in Somalia. We shall stand united and in solidarity.”
Kenya has suffered a spate of gun, grenade and bomb attacks since sending troops into southern Somalia last October to target Shebaab rebels fighting to overthrow the weak UN-backed government in the Horn of Africa state.
However, the well-organised and coordinated attacks appear to mark a scaling up from previous smaller attacks, which have often been simply grenades hurled into bars or bus stations.
Observers fear that insurgents could copy tactics used in Nigeria, which has suffered a string of almost weekly attacks on church services in recent months in which dozens have been killed.
The Vatican on Sunday condemned the killings, noting attacks on people “in their place of worship has become a method, believed to be particularly efficient, of spreading hatred and fear.”
Odinga voiced concern that the Shebaab, who profess allegiance to Al Qaeda “could link up with other terrorist groups like Boko Haram in Nigeria,” although he gave no further details.
The Shebaab have not claimed responsibility for the attack, although the pro-Shebaab Twitter site Al Kataib boasted of a “successful operation in Garissa.”
