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BOSSASO - Somali gunmen have released a French journalist they had kidnapped in the northern Puntland region, a regional official said.
"The French journalist has just been released and is now staying with officials, local elders and some diplomats in the hotel," Puntland trade and industry minister Abdishamad Yusuf Abwan told Reuters.
Witnesses said the abductors handed over Gwen Le Gouil to French diplomats at a hotel in Bosasso, Puntland's main port, earlier on Monday.
It was not clear if an original ransom demand of up to US$70,000 ($92,000) had been paid.
Le Gouil, a freelance cameraman working for the European station ARTE, was kidnapped on December 16.
In Paris, Reporters Without Borders said Omar Faruk Osman, the head of its partner organisation, the National Union of Somali Journalists, said Le Gouil was in the care of French officials.
"Gwenlaouen Le Gouil was taken in by traditional chiefs along the way from his place of captivity," it quoted Osman as saying.
No comment was immediately available from the French foreign ministry.
- REUTERS
