Crooked guard led to aid workers' kidnapping in Somalia, group says

The kidnappers seized Buchanan and Thisted on October 25 in the central Somali town of Galkayo after they visited humanitarian projects there, the Danish Refugee Council said. Neither was harmed, the aid group said.

Buchanan's father, John, was to go to Sicily to see her, CNN learned. She will be returned to the United States when she wants, probably in a U.S. military aircraft.

Somalia's transitional government welcomed the U.S. military operation. The rescue "is a great joy to the Somali government and to all Somalis as well as to all right thinking people everywhere," the government said in a statement.

"Hitting them hard is the only language kidnappers of innocent people, pirates and terrorists understand, and every opportunity should be taken to wipe out this scourge from our country."

The new U.N. envoy to Somalia -- the first permanent U.N. representative there in 17 years -- also expressed understanding about the military operation.

"If negotiations fail, all means must be applied, including rescue operations," Augustine Mahiga said Thursday, even as he urged that lives be protected "on both sides."

Thisted's sister and brother-in-law wept for joy when they heard he had been rescued, the brother-in-law, Svend Rask, told Denmark's TV2.

"She was overjoyed when she told us what happened," Rask said, speaking of the daughter who gave them the news.

The Navy SEAL unit that killed Osama bin Laden last year in Pakistan participated in the rescue mission, a U.S. official said, without specifying whether any of the same individuals were on both assaults. The SEALs are part of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, formerly known as SEAL Team Six.

The area where the hostages were seized is known as a hub for pirates, rather than an area of Islamic militant activity.

Somalia Report, a website that tracks piracy statistics, said more than $150 million was paid out in ransoms in 2011.

Successful pirate attacks on merchant vessels began to drop off in 2011 in face of improved shipping security -- including on board armed security detachments -- and stronger action from the foreign navies patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.

The International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy, said the number of attacks had risen but the success rate had plummeted to 12% in the first nine months of 2011.

The aid workers were part of the Danish Refugee Council's de-mining unit, which aims to make civilians safe from land mines and unexploded ordnance.

Buchanan has been employed as a regional education adviser with the mine clearance unit since May; Thisted, a community safety manager with the de-mining unit, has been working in Somaliland and Somalia since June 2009.