An Irish Red Cross worker who was abducted earlier this week by an armed group in Ethiopia has been released unharmed.
Donal Ó Súilleabháin, 41, from Sligo, was travelling with six other colleagues when they were abducted by an armed group in the southern town of Gode at about 10am on Monday.
Five of the seven aid workers were subsequently released, but Mr Ó Súilleabháin and an Ethiopian colleague were kept captive. The water and sanitation engineer was kidnapped at gunpoint but was reportedly treated well during his ordeal.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern, has welcomed his release.
The Department of Foreign Affairs sent an experienced negotiator to Ethiopia to assist the Red Cross. Eoghan Ó Súilleabháin, a brother of the kidnapped man and himself an aid worker with the Red Cross's sister agency, Goal, also travelled to the region from Kenya.
There has been low-level conflict between the army and rebels known as the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in the ethnic Somali-inhabited region.
Donal Ó Súilleabháin was with seven Ethiopian Red Cross staff when he and his co-worker were taken away on foot by the kidnappers. He was the only Irish person working for the agency in Gode, some 680 miles east of the capital. Other Irish aid groups have a presence in the region.
Mr Ahern said: "This is great news. I particularly want to thank our diplomatic staff overseas and the hard work of of the Red Cross in ensuring his safe release."
Mr Ó Súilleabháin, a hydrologist, has worked for the aid agency building new wells to provide clean water supplies for hundreds of thousands of people for the last two years. He travelled on to Ethiopia in August from strife-torn Darfur where he was working. The engineer, who has also worked in Liberia, has undergone security training.
Ireland has a long association with both Ethiopia and Somalia through humanitarian and financial relief since the civil war there in the 1990s.
The Red Cross has halted its activities in the region for the first time in 11 years.
PA