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MOGADISHU, Somalia -- Two foreign aid workers kidnapped in Somalia last month were released Tuesday, a Western diplomat and a Somali official said. The kidnapped women, a doctor from Spain and a nurse from Argentina, were seized Dec. 26 in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northeastern Somalia. "We are happy the two are released," said the Spanish ambassador to Kenya, Nicolas Martin Cinto, who traveled to Somalia to press for the women's release. "We paid no ransom for their release."
Puntland is known as a staging post for human traffickers running boats into Yemen, and piracy is rampant off its coast. A French journalist, Gwen Le Gouil, was kidnapped in the same region on Dec. 16, but he was released after eight days.
SOURCE: AP, Thursday, January 03, 2008