Two demining experts -- one from Denmark, the other from Sweden -- were released Saturday hours after they were kidnapped by Islamist militants in Somalia, a Swedish government spokeswoman told AFP.
   
"We have spoken with them and they are well, although they are still in a bit of a state of shock," said Karin Viklund of Raddningsverket, the Swedish government's risk assessment and emergency management agency.
   
They had been snatched, together with a Somali colleague, when insurgents attacked the town of Hodur, 370 kilometres (235 miles) west of the Somali capital Mogadishu, early Saturday morning.
   
"The two UN mine action workers were taken from the International Medical Corps compound" in Hodur, a UN official in the Kenyan capital Nairobi told AFP earlier Saturday.
   
Another UN official said local authorites had been negotiating with the kidnappers and calling for their immediate and unconditional release. He added that local chief were also involved in the talks.
   
The latest abductions took the number of humanitarian workers kidnapped recently in Somalia to nine -- two Swedes, two Italians, one British national, one Kenyan and three Somalis.
   
An uninterrupted civil war has plagued the Horn of Africa nation since the 1991 overthrow of president Mohamed Siad Barre, defying numerous peace initiatives and truce deals.
   
Since their ouster in early 2007 by Ethiopian and Somali forces, Islamists forces have waged a guerrilla war estimated by international rights groups and aid agencies to have left at least 6,000 civilians dead and hundreds of thousands displaced.
   
The African Union has deployed 2,600 peacekeepers in Somalia -- well short of a promised 8,000 troops -- but so far it has failed to stem the violence and unrest.