MOGADISHU , Oct. 3 (Xinhua) -- A spokesman for an Islamist faction in Somalia on Saturday said three aid workers kidnapped two months ago were released by their captors.

Mohamed Osman Arus, spokesman for the Islamist Hezbul Islam faction, said the humanitarian workers were released and flown out of the faction-controlled southern town of Luq.

"I can only tell that they (hostages) were released by their captors today and left the country safe and sound," Arus told Xinhua.

Arus denied his group was involved in the abduction of the three aid workers in a cross border raid into Kenya in July, but said the group "facilitated" the negotiations to release them.

The spokesman would not elaborate on whether a ransom was paid to secure their release.

The three hostages were identified as an American, a Zimbabwean and a Pakistani, soon after they were taken hostages in mid-July by a Somali militia group into the Kenyan border town of Mandera, where the three were said to be working for the French aid agency the Action Against Hunger (ACF).

Several other foreign and Somali hostages, including journalists and aid workers, are still being held in the war-torn Horn of Africa country by local armed groups, who demand payment of ransom for their release.

Somalia has been without a central government since the overthrow of the late Somali ruler Mohamed Siyad Barre in 1991.