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| Aid workers 'released' in Somalia | Aid workers 'released' in Somalia |
| (20 minutes later) | |
| Four UN aid workers, three of them foreigners, have been freed in southern Somalia just hours after being abducted, reports say. | Four UN aid workers, three of them foreigners, have been freed in southern Somalia just hours after being abducted, reports say. |
| A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist militant group told Reuters news agency he was with the four and they would be handed over to the UN shortly. | A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist militant group told Reuters news agency he was with the four and they would be handed over to the UN shortly. |
| Sheikh Muktar Robow Mansoor said they had been freed from a militia holding them but gave no details. | |
| UN officials speaking on condition of anonymity also confirmed the release. | |
| The foreign aid workers, whose nationalities were not given, had been travelling with their Somali colleague in a car to the airstrip near Wajid, 340km (210 miles) north-west of the capital Mogadishu. | |
| They were on a stopover between Puntland in northern Somalia and their destination of Kenya when they were abducted. | |
| "No violence or shooting was reported to have occurred during the incident," the UN humanitarian coordinator's office for Somalia said in a statement earlier on Monday. | |
| 'Joint effort' | |
| Wajid has been controlled by al-Shabab for the past three months although local clan militia also operate in the town. | |
| "I can confirm to you that all four aid workers were released from militia who abducted them in Wajid this morning - unconditionally after a joint effort," Mr Mansoor added. | |
| A local humanitarian worker who declined to be named told Reuters by telephone the four were now back in a UN compound. | |
| The UN says 35 aid workers were killed in 2008 and 26 abducted in 2008, the Associated Press news agency reports. | |
| Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991. | |
| Islamist insurgents are in control of most of southern Somalia. | |
| Puntland is a semi-autonomous region, which has been relatively stable. |