Sylvia Romano, Italian aid-worker abducted 18 months ago by Al-shabaab freed; flown to Italy

The Plane carrying Silvia Romano; a 23-year old Italian aid worker adbducted by Al-Shabaab millitants in Kilifi 18 months ago,  touched down at Rome's Ciampino airport  at about 14:00 hours local time a day after she was freed by her captors. Aboard a special flight, Romano was escorted by masked men from the intelligence service. Romano is seen dressed in traditional Somali women's clothes and  her head covered. Italian Media reported that she converted to Islam. She temporarily removed her protective mask to wave asshe descended the steps from the jet before hugging relatives waiting for her at the airport.
She was greeted by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte andItaly's Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio . In her home neighbourhood in Milan, church bells saluted her arrival, with many people on their balconies, SKY TG24 television showed. Romano is expected to meet prosecutors in Rome.. Prime Minister Conte said that the task force working to free Romano had been in the final stages "for the last months", after having proof that she was still alive. He added that details were not revealed so as not tocompromise the operation.
Italian newspapers reported that Italy's intelligence services had worked with their Somali and Turkish counterparts to free Romano. Al-shabaab gunmen seized Romano, who was working for an Italian charity called Africa Milele, in northern Kenya in November 2018. She was found on Saturday in Somalia, some 30 km outside the capital of Mogadishu, and was released thanks to efforts by the external intelligence agency, Italy's Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio said.
A month after her kidnap, Kenyan intelligence officers insisted she was within the country's border and had not been moved to Somalia by her abductors as was widely speculated. A search effort at the time yielded no fruits with the combined efforts of military and police officers at Boni forest and it's neighbourhoods stretching across counties of Tana River, Garrissa and lamu but Italian news outlets indicate the Al-shabaab militants who kidnapped the aid worker was sneaked to Somalia where she has been. Al-shabaab have been blamed for a series of kidnaps along Kenyan coast with abduction of four foreigners in 2018 prompting the Kenyan government to deploy it's soldiers in Somalia to fight the terror group in an operation dubbed Operation Linda Nchi commissioned by the then president Mwai Kibaki who was commander in Chief of the Kenya armed forces.

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