Dublin aid worker, 32, kidnapped in Sudan
Sharon Cummins, a 32-year-old aid worker from Dublin with GOAL, was kidnapped along with a Ugandan colleague and Sudanese watchman yesterday evening.
The trio were taken by an unknown number of gunmen from their compound in the town of Kutum, north of Darfur.
The watchman was later released, but the whereabouts of Ms Cummins and her Ugandan colleague, Hilda Kawuki, who is in her 40s, remained unknown.
GOAL chief executive John O’Shea said the thoughts and prayers of everybody involved in the aid agency were with the two missing women. “The local police are doing their best to get them back,” Mr O’Shea said.
He said the kidnappers probably wanted money. “I only hope they come to their senses and release them,” he said.
The women were among a group of five GOAL workers who were stationed in the Kutum area. Ms Cummins had been working in the Kutum for about a year. GOAL has about 25 aid workers stationed in the African country.
The aid agency, which has been working in Sudan since 1985, has been concentrating on operating primary healthcare programmes.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was in touch with the Irish embassy in Cairo and United Nations officials are also trying to retrieve the two women.
It is the third kidnapping of aid workers in the Darfur region since an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes was issued on March 4 by the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir.
