Aid group worker killed in Somalia

A guard working for an aid group in Somalia was killed in a raid on its offices, two German partner organizations said Thursday.

Meanwhile, two foreign aid workers who had been kidnapped by gunmen in Somalia then released unharmed after a week's captivity arrived in Madrid.

Mohamoud Ahmed Sheikh, a guard for the Daryeel Bulsho Guud organization, was killed Wednesday when 40 heavily armed men stormed its compound in Mogadishu and plundered its offices, Caritas international and Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe said.

"This horrendous act marks a new stage in the brutalization of Somalia," the statement said. "For the first time, our colleagues, whose neutrality had been respected by all sides so far, have become victims of a targeted attack."

The German groups did not say who might have been behind the attack.

Daryeel Bulsho Guud provides clean water, food and sanitation for refugees in camps in and around Mogadishu and has been financially supported by the two German relief organizations since 1996, the German groups said.

In Madrid, Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos greeted former hostages Mercedes Garcia of Spain and Argentine nurse Pilar Bauza Moreno on the tarmac of the Torrejon air base late on Thursday.

The two women were seized Dec. 26 in Puntland, a semiautonomous region in northeastern Somalia, by six gunmen while driving to a center where aid group Doctors Without Borders treats children with malnutrition. Puntland is known as a hub for human traffickers running boats into Yemen and a source of marine piracy.

The United Nations says Somalia is facing Africa's worst humanitarian crisis.