Two British UN security officers held captive here for more than a week in Somalia have been freed and have boarded a plane for Nairobi.
"They have been released. They are in good health. They are on their way to Kenya," UN spokeswoman Ms Sonya Laurence Green said in Nairobi of Mr Bill Condie (61) and Mr Peter Carter (41).
Mr Condie and Mr Carter had been held in the north of the Somali capital by gunmen affiliated to warlord Musa Sudi Yalahow who were said to have acted on their own initiative in abducting the pair.
Their ordeal began on Tuesday last week when a north Mogadishu compound used by the medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres came under attack by gunmen loyal to Yalahow.
Mr Condie and Mr Carter were among nine western aid workers caught up in the incident, during which 12 Somalis were killed.
On March 28th, five of the aid workers caught up in the firefight left a house where they had been trapped during the gunbattle, while another two, who had been taken captive, were released unharmed on Friday.
Yalahow is among a group of warlords which do not recognise the legitimacy of the fledgling transitional government, which since its inception last year has not managed to exert control far beyond a few pockets of Mogadishu.
AFP