Aid workers free in Darfur after reported kidnap

Two Sudanese staffers of Libya's Kadhafi Foundation who had been reported kidnapped in Darfur are free, Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs told AFP on Friday, saying they had never been abducted.

"I have just contacted the security people at El-Fasher (capital of north Darfur). The two Sudanese from the Kadhafi Foundation were freed after half an hour. It was a misunderstanding," Abdel Baqi Gilani said, adding that they had never been kidnapped but declining to give details.

Earlier, Kadhafi Foundation officials said the two, whose names were not given, had been kidnapped on Wednesday near El-Fasher.

Following Gilani's announcement, they maintained their insistence that the two had been kidnapped.

The two were said to be project leaders for the Association of the Brothers of the South, an arm of the foundation run by Kadhafi's son Seif al-Islam, association director Mashaallah Zaoui said by telephone from Sudan.

They were snatched as they supervised association projects in Darfur, Zaoui said, without giving other details.

Peacekeepers from the UN-African Union peacekeeping force and UN officials had not been able to confirm the alleged kidnapping.

The news comes a day after the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that one of its employees, Frenchman Gauthier Lefevre, had been abducted in Darfur.

Gilani told AFP Lefevre is in "good health" and that he expected him to be released soon.

On Friday, a British diplomat in Khartoum, Pier Craven, said Lefevre also has British nationality.

Gilani voiced fear of more abductions and urged foreign relief organisations "to bolster security around their offices."

A relief official echoed his concern and said: "What has been happening in Darfur is very worrisome. I hope that the government will take this seriously."

On Sunday, two female aid workers -- Irishwoman Sharon Commins and Ugandan Hilda Kawuki -- were freed after 107 days of gruelling captivity in Darfur.

The two women's captivity was the longest endured by foreign aid staff in Darfur since the conflict erupted in the region in early 2003.

Two members of Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres MSF) and French aid agency Aide Medicale Internationale (AMI) were kidnapped in March and April but were later freed unharmed.

However, two civilian employees of the UN-African Union joint peacekeeping force in Darfur who were snatched in August at Zalingei in west Darfur are still in the hands of their abductors.

The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in February 2003.

The government says 10,000 people have been killed.

Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir is the target of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.

Rights campaign group Amnesty International has called on Nigeria to arrest Beshir if he accepts an invitation from the African Union to a meeting in Abuja next week on the Darfur crisis.

Former South African president Thabo Mbeki is expected to submit a report on the Darfur situation to the meeting.