- MSF says aid workers in Sudan freed
- Aid group says no ransom was paid
(Adds MSF Nairobi comments, paragraphs 8-9)
By Andrew Heavens
KHARTOUM, March 13 (Reuters) - Four aid workers with the French-based medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who were kidnapped in Sudan's Darfur region have been released, MSF Italy said on Friday.
MSF identified them as a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor, a French coordinator and a Sudanese national. "The kidnappers called us... (the hostages) were released an hour ago," Kostas Moschochoritis, head of MSF Italy, told Reuters.
The Italian Foreign Ministry confirmed the release.
Moschochoritis said no money was paid. "I can absolutely guarantee that no ransom was paid," he said. The four were on their way to El Fasher in north Darfur, he added.
Tension has risen in Sudan since the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided last week to issue an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir over accusations of war crimes in Darfur.
Sudan reacted by shutting down 16 aid organisations, saying they had helped the international court in The Hague, an accusation aid groups deny. Two arms of MSF were among those asked to leave, but MSF Belgium was not among them.
The three foreign MSF workers taken hostage were seized on Wednesday along with two Sudanese staff in the north Darfur town of Saraf Omra. MSF in Belgium had previously said the two Sudanese were released soon after being captured.
Susan Sandars, MSF's Nairobi-based spokeswoman, said: "MSF has been informed by the Sudanese authorities that our colleagues have been released," but added that the group had not seen or spoken to them.
"We have been told that they will be returned by the Sudanese authorities. However we don't know how long this will take," she said.
The Catholic missionary news agency MISNA gave the names of the three foreign MSF staff as Laura Archer, Mauro D'Ascanio and Raphael Meonier.
The Sudanese government had earlier said it had located the aid workers and was in contact with the kidnappers.
MSF SUSPENDS OPERATIONS
MSF said earlier on Friday it had suspended all its operations in Darfur and pulled around 30 international staff back to Khartoum as a security move after the armed abduction.
"We are extremely concerned for our staff and for the people we were trying to assist in Darfur," said MSF's Sandars.
The group was particularly concerned about Saraf Omra, where it ran the only health clinic for the area's 60,000 residents. "Now there will be no general health care, no surgical capacity, no emergency transport for critical patients," said Sandars.
Sudan's state media and government officials have used emotive rhetoric over the past week against the expelled aid groups, accusing them of spying on the country and doing little to help Darfuris.
The pro-government newspaper Akhir Lahzah on Friday published an interview with a senior health official criticising MSF's decision to suspend its Darfur operations after the abduction as a "spiteful act" of retaliation for the expulsions.
Walter Kaelin, the U.N. secretary general's representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), warned that malnutrition and death rates could rise in Darfur displacement camps after the expulsions of aid groups.
"I really fear that the impact could be extremely negative, you could see a humanitarian catastrophe in the region," he told a news briefing in Geneva after addressing the U.N. Human Rights Council.
International experts say almost six years of fighting in Darfur has killed 200,000 people and uprooted more than 2.7 million. Khartoum says 10,000 have died.
(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Silvia Aloisi and Massimiliano Di Giorgio in Rome; editing by Tim Pearce)
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