Barack Obama hails US Navy SEAL Somalia raid that freed aid workers

“The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will
spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their
captors to justice.”

Armed men seized Miss Buchanan, from Virginia, and Mr Thisted three months ago
as they were visiting projects in central Somalia working to clear
minefields following the country’s civil war.

The aid workers’ security guards, hired to protect them, were alleged to have
colluded with pirate gangs to arrange the kidnapping.

The timing of Wednesday’s raid may have been made more urgent by a medical
condition.

The Danish Refugee Council, the pair’s employers, had been trying without
success to win the hostages’ release through talks with Somali elders.

“One of the hostages has a disease that was very serious and that had to be
solved,” Villy Soevndal, Denmark’s foreign minister, told the country’s TV2
channel, without giving more details.

Doctors at the US military base in Djibouti, the Red Sea state from where the
operation was launched, were carrying out medical checks on the aid workers
on Wednesday. They will be flown home soon, their employers said.

There were concerns, however, that the mission could have jeopardised the
safety of another American, Michael Scott Moore, a journalist, who was
kidnapped in the same area last week. He was still being held on Wednesday.

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