ROME (AFP) ― Two Italian aid workers abducted in northern Syria last summer arrived Friday in Rome, where they were welcomed with “relief” a day after their release.
Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni welcomed Greta Ramelli, 20, and Vanessa Marzullo, 21, after their flight from Turkey landed at Ciampino military airport near Rome in the early hours of the morning.
Wearing faint smiles and with their heads bowed, the women were rushed into the airport hall without a word or even a nod towards the press.
They were to be taken to hospital for a checkup and then to see Rome’s antiterrorist prosecution office, which has opened an investigation into their abduction.
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| Greta Ramelli (center) and Vanessa Marzullo (right) are welcomed by Italy’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. (AFP-Yonhap) |
The women, from Lombardy in northern Italy, disappeared on July 31 near Aleppo in northern Syria three days after they arrived from Turkey.
“I’m feeling such enormous joy: this is the news I have been waiting for for a long time,” Salvatore Marzullo, father of Vanessa, said from his restaurant in Verdello near Bergamo in northern Italy, after news of their release.
“I am so, so happy,” he told the AGI news agency.
On Twitter, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano welcomed the news “with great joy and a huge sigh of relief.”
The foreign ministry said Thursday their release was the result of “intense work by team Italy” but officials have so far not released details of how the women had come to be freed by or from their unknown abductors.
Gentiloni is expected to speak to members of parliament later Friday, according to Italian media reports.
Ramelli and Marzullo were captured by gunmen in Aleppo province while working for the aid group Horryaty, which specializes in health and clean water projects.
They were last heard of on December 31 when a video was posted online showing them dressed in black robes and headscarves and urging the Italian government to do everything it could to bring them home.
The posting on YouTube was entitled “Al-Nusra Front detains two Italian employees because of their government’s participation in the coalition against it.”
