Mogadishu, 17 March-(ANA)-Four UN aid workers, three of them foreigners, have been freed in Somalia just hours after being abducted.
"I am very enormously relieved that our staff are free and safe," said senior UN official Mark Bowden in Kenya.
A spokesman for the al-Shabab Islamist insurgents said the group had helped secure the four's release from local gunmen.
Al-Shabab controls much of southern Somalia. It is fighting against a moderate Islamist president.
"I can confirm to you that all four aid workers were released from militia who abducted them in Wajid this [Monday] morning - unconditionally after a joint effort," al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Muktar Robow Mansoor told Reuters news agency.
The UN says 35 aid workers were killed and 26 abducted in Somalia last year, the Associated Press news agency reports.
Somalia has been without a functioning government since 1991. (ANA)
UK/Houthis