NAIROBI
Two Kenyan aid workers returned home late Saturday after three years in captivity by the Somali militant group Al-Shabaab.
Daniel Njuguna Wanyoike and James Kiarie Gichuhi were airlifted from the border to the Eastleigh military base in Nairobi.
According to Kenya Defense Force Spokesman Colonel Willy Wesonga, the two have been handed over to the Ministry of Internal Security.
Kenyan authorities avoided the coverage of their arrival with Wesonga saying they were still traumatized, shaken and unready to face the media.
On Friday, Kenyan army forces said it had staged a night ambush on an Al-Shabaab convoy in southwest Somalia on Thursday before freeing the two Kenyan hostages.
But in a statement Saturday, Al-Shabaab said the two had been "released" not "rescued", adding it had helped them reach their country's border.
Wanyoike was kidnapped in Somalia on October 5, 2011, while Gichuhi was seized on November 19, 2011,inside Kenya.
It was only until February 24 that their fate had become known when Al-Shabaab commanders paraded them in a mosque in Barawe, the militants' stronghold in south Somalia.
Kenya has been on high security alert since last September's Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi in which 67 people were killed. The attack was claimed by Al-Shabaab.
Al-Shabaab staged a series of kidnappings on aid workers and tourists in Kenya prompting the East African country to send its troops into Somalia in 2011 in pursuit of the militants.
Somalia has remained in the grip of on-again, off-again violence since the outbreak of civil war in 1991.
The country had appeared to inch closer to stability with the recent installation of a new government and the intervention of African Union troops tasked with combatting Al-Shabaab.
By Yassin Juma
englishnews@aa.com.tr
