By Peter Orengo and Agencies
Two Italian nuns abducted by Al Shabab militias last November have been freed.
An Italian Foreign Ministry spokesman gave no details on the release but a Catholic missionary news agency said the two were freed in Somalia.
The fate of the Kenyan driver adducted with the nuns is not known.
The nuns were seized along with the driver when a gang stormed the village of El Wak, near the Kenyan border with Somalia.
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Sr Maria Teresa Oliviero, 61, and Sr Caterina Garaudo belonged to a missionary group, Padre de Foucauld Missionary Movement, and had lived in Kenya for more than 20 years.
They worked at El Wak medical centre and helped the disabled and those suffering from tuberculosis and epilepsy. Kenyan military held a major operation along the Kenya Somalia border in a bid to receive intelligent information about their abduction.
The Italian government opposed a military intervention to rescue the two, saying it might endanger the two nuns’ lives. "We are very happy," Sister Caterina Giraudo told an Italian television by phone from the Italian embassy in Nairobi after her release. "We were treated well, we are fine ... they gave us what was necessary," she said. The Vatican said it welcomed the news with "great joy".
