NAIROBI: Somali gunmen on Saturday released three foreigners working for Action Against Hunger who were seized from northern Kenya in a cross-border raid in July, a rebel official and the aid organization said.
The three — an American, a Zimbabwean and a Pakistani — boarded a plane in the southern town of Luq, and were expected to head to Nairobi. A representative for Action Against Hunger in Kenya confirmed three of its workers had been released on Saturday and said they were in good health.
Cross-border raids are fairly common in the region, but usually involve cattle rustlers or gangs of robbers preying on business people in both countries. Ill-funded Kenyan security forces can do little to police the vast, impoverished area. It was not clear whether a ransom had been paid for the release of the aid workers, taken from Kenya’s remote Mandera province that borders Somalia and Ethiopia.
Meanwhile, Somalia’s two main insurgent groups clashed Saturday near the southern port of Kismayu and residents said Al-Shabab and Hizbul Islam were squaring up for battles elsewhere in the country.
The rebel groups fought for control of the lucrative port and main airport in southern Somalia this week. Al-Shabab won the battle, in which a local rights group said at least 28 civilians and an unknown number of combatants were killed.
Until then, the two influential rebel groups, which control much of southern and central Somalia, had been allies in their fight against the UN-backed administration that is chiefly confined to the capital, Mogadishu.
Hizbul Islam and residents said the clashes late Friday and early Saturday were in two villages — one 30 km and the other 60 km from Kismayu. “After we left Kismayu, Al-Shabab followed us and we fought and drove them back yesterday. They attacked us again this morning and fighting is going on in these villages,” Hizb spokesman Ismail Adow said.
