Red Cross workers kidnapped in Congo released

Three Red Cross staff members kidnapped three days ago in eastern Congo in an attack blamed by a rights group on Rwandan rebels have been released, the Geneva-based organisation said on Friday.

"They are free, they were handed over to the local authorities and they will be back in Goma tomorrow," an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman told Reuters, giving no further details.

The Congo-based Centre of Studies for the Promotion of Peace, Democracy and Human Rights blamed the kidnapping on the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a grouping of former soldiers and Hutu fighters behind Rwanda's 1994 genocide.

Aid workers are frequently abducted in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in January the United Nations said a spike in the number of kidnappings and insecurity had made it difficult to provide humanitarian aid.