Khartaum, October 19: Two female aid workers released after more than 100 days of captivity in Darfur arrived in Khartoum on Monday, exhausted but delighted to be free and eager to get back home.
Irishwoman Sharon Commins, 33, and Ugandan Hilda Kawuki, 42, were kidnapped in the North Darfur town of Kutum on July 3 by a gang of armed men from a compound run by Irish relief group GOAL.
“We are very happy to be here,” said Commins, as she walked on the tarmac of Khartoum airport.
“I can’t wait to see the family,” said Kawuki. “I am very exhausted because we have not really rested since being released.”
Commins was due to fly to Dublin later in the day, and Kawuki was to leave for home on Tuesday.
The two women were freed early Sunday after local tribal chiefs pressured their kidnappers into releasing them, a Sudanese minister said.
North Darfur state humanitarian affairs minister Abdel Baqi Gilani said that no ransom had been paid.
“We are very very grateful to the government of Sudan and the people of Sudan who prayed for us and kept our family strong and us strong,” Commins said.
The two spent more than 100 days in captivity, the longest endured by foreign aid staff in Darfur since the conflict erupted in the western region in early 2003.
Two members of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres MSF) and French aid agency Aide Medicale Internationale (AMI) had been kidnapped in March and April then released after spending three days and 26 days respectively in captivity.
Gilani said that those who carried out the latest kidnapping must be brought to justice.
“They must be punished otherwise there will be no more order” in Darfur, he said.
Two civilian employees for the UN-African Union joint peacekeeping force in Darfur kidnapped in August at Zalingei in west Darfur are still in the hands of their abductors. They are the only hostages still kidnapped in Darfur.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum and its allies.
Over the last six years, the rebels have fractured into multiple movements, fraying rebel groups, banditry, flip-flopping militias and the war has widened into overlapping tribal conflicts.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease and more than 2.7 million fled their homes.
Many of the rebels enjoy direct and indirect foreign support that helped fuel the conflict, with some critics pointing the finger at France, which has a military presence in neighbouring Chad – also accused of arming the Sudanese rebels. France had been accused of involvement in the genocide in Rwanda, but Paris denied responsibility, conceding only that ‘political’ errors were made.