Cuban doctors kidnapped from Mandera are alive—Cuban health minister

NAIROBI—The two Cuban doctors abducted in Mandera three months ago are alive, Cuban Health Minister Jose Angel Portal said on Friday.

At a press conference in Havana, Portal said Cuba was doing everything it could “to recover the kidnap victims and has so far received no ransom demands from the kidnappers, as some media sources had reported.”

Efforts to secure the release of surgeon Landy Rodriguez and internist Assel Herrera represent “a complex process that requires time and discretion to succeed,” he said.

“Cuba’s government will not cease its efforts for their release,” he added.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel recently spoke by phone with his counterparts in Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, and Mohamed Abdullahi Farmajo to coordinate efforts to recover the doctors, who appear to have been kidnapped by extremist group al-Shabaab, which operates in the border area.

The two health workers on their way to work were bundled into two cars by the militants who drove towards the Somalia border at a high speed. Their bodyguard was killed and their driver taken into custody.

There has been no claim of responsibility or public ransom demand.

The Cuban doctors are said to have requested to be housed inside the Mandera Hospital compound, not kilometres away in a house from which they needed armed escorts twice a day.

A total of eight Cuban doctors now have been withdrawn from Wajir, Garissa, Lamu and Tana River counties, two from each.

The status of efforts by respected elders from Mandera, who were carefully selected, to broker a deal with their counterparts from Somalia is not known.