A dramatic rescue job for abducted aid workers

By Josephat Siror

The usual whoosh at Wilson airport was temporarily subdued as a military chopper ferrying aid workers rambled in the air before landing at exactly 3pm on Monday.

On the ground were splintered gatherings with their nervous sights glued on the plane from close range. Business at the airport was temporarily put on hold as staff coalesced in a makeshift vantage.

Some top officials including Kenya’s Deputy Speaker of National Assembly Farah Mahalim and Norwegian envoy Per Ludvig Magnus had gathered for hours anxiously waiting for the arrival of the plane, for it carried four aid workers who had been rescued from a suspected militia group.

The workers had been kidnapped last Friday at the Dadaab refugee camp.

The four aid workers were rescued by combined Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG) forces.

When the plane touched down and the rescued workers disembarked, the gathered crowd burst into joy.

Rewarding moment
It was a rewarding moment for those gathered. Since Sunday morning when attackers targeted worshippers in a church in Garissa killing 17 and wounding more than 60, the country has been covered by a cloud of sadness.

Although exhausted, the Nowergian Refugee Council (NRC) staff smiled as they waved to the crowd as they made their way to the VIP lounge.

Not even a Philipine colleague Glenn Costes, 40, who appeared to be writhing in pain could hide his joy. He was the first one to alight from the plane aided by the co-pilot of Kenyan military chopper.

His counterparts Mr Steven Dennis, 37, Ms Qurat-Ul-Ain Sadozai, 38, from Canada and Ms Astrid Sehl, 33, from Norway were exceptionally happy. They wore dust battered clothes, an indicator of the gruelling moments they had been in the hands of their captors.

Team leader Sadozai said, “We are safe. We are happy to be alive and we are back.”
The relief workers were kidnapped at Ifo camp in Dadaab early Friday and driven 35 miles inside war-torn Somalia by a militia group.

But the militia’s plans were scuttled when the combined forces of TFG and KDF relentlessly pursued them and caught them them on Sunday morning.

In what seems to be a daring successful mission, the KDF portrayed confidence, determination and bravery. Their brief was clear; capture or kill and rescue. 

Visibly underlined in their faces was an extension of what culminated in the rescue mission. Armed KDF forces stood guard at the airport as the elated abductees squeezed their way in front of ever flashing cameras.

Fierce fight
The rescue operation was not smooth all the way. There were some challenges such as the hostile jungle and a fierce fight with the abductors.

A unit of soldiers in the Juber region straddling Kenya-Somalia border flagged down a vehicle on Sunday. The occupants of the vehicle led the troops to the hostages. Those involved in the mission say the rescue lasted hours as the militants attempted to repulse the rescuers.

KDF spokesman Colonel Cyrus Oguna says the soldiers engaged the abductors in a gun-fight and one of the abductors was killed.

“There was a gunfight during the rescue mission. Our joint forces killed one of the attackers and two others escaped,” says Oguna.

In the air, military aircrafts maintained close look at the operation whose details could rather be wrapped in military shelves.

Attackers were soon defeated with two of them escaping in Alu Gulay village. Soon after, the aid workers were bundled into the military plane to Nairobi via Dobley. The rescue left many dumbfounded as such missions are normally synonymous with foreign elite forces notably, the famous Navy SEAls of the United States.

The successful rescue brought joy to the aid workers and the entire fraternity of Norway’s relief agency and rescuers.

The aid agency sledded a sympathetic note for the driver, who lost his life during the daylight attack at Ifo camp.

The message read in part: “Our thoughts go to the family of the NRC driver, Abdi Ali, who was killed during the attack on Friday, and to our two local employees who are currently undergoing treatment in hospital for injuries inflicted in the incident.”

Church slaughter
Before abducting the aid workers last Friday, the militias killed the driver and injured two others.

For Kenya, the success of the rescue was not celebrated as it would have been had there been no slaughter last Sunday at a church in Garissa by suspected militia group which coincidentally lies in the same region where the captors took aid workers.

Happy to be free at last, the rescued aid workers took the first flight home to join their families and recount their ordeal.

It was a dramatic rescue job for abducted aid workers