N'DJAMENA (Reuters) - Kidnappers have released a worker for Oxfam who was abducted more than a week ago in eastern Chad, Chad's interior minister said.
The kidnapping took place near the town of Abeche and comes weeks after the United Nations agreed to start pulling its MINURCAT peacekeepers out of the central African country, a move aid groups feared would create a security vacuum.
"He is free and is in good health," Minister Ahmat Mahamat Bachir told Reuters by telephone, describing the captors as among the many armed bandits operating in the region.
Oxfam named the worker as Swiss national Hubert Ballaman.
Bachir said security forces had tracked Ballaman and his captors to the town of Guerida just to the north of Abeche, and that the operation to free him had passed off without violence.
(Reporting by Moumine Ngarmbassa; writing by Mark John; Editing by Jon Boyle)
