Italian Nuns Freed After Kidnap By Somalis

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`We are very happy,` Sister Caterina Giraudo, 67, told SKY Italia television by phone from the Italian embassy in Nairobi.

Two Italian nuns kidnapped by Somali gunmen in a cross-border raid into Kenya in November have been freed.

"We are very happy," Sister Caterina Giraudo, 67, told SKY Italia television by phone from the Italian embassy in Nairobi. "We were treated well, we are fine ... they gave us what was necessary."

The Vatican said it welcomed the news with "great joy". Italy's envoy to Kenya, Pierandrea Magistrati, told Reuters the two nuns were well and resting at his residence.

Catholic missionaries Giraudo and Maria Teresa Olivero, 60, were abducted on Nov. 10 after a raid on the Kenyan border town of El Wak. The kidnappers then took them deeper into Somalia.

MISNA, a Catholic missionary news agency, said the two had been freed overnight in Somalia.

Somalia is one of the world's most dangerous countries for aid workers who are often abducted or killed in attacks usually blamed on insurgents or clan militia.

El Wak is a remote settlement in the arid northeast of Kenya and just a few kms from a town on the Somali side of the border controlled by Islamist insurgents.

Two Somalis working for the U.N.'s World Food Programme were shot dead in southern Somalia last month.