What You Need to Know:

Aleksandra Kuligowska, a Polish doctor who was kidnapped by armed assailants last week has been freed through a joint operation conducted by French and Chadian forces. 

Kuligowska and a Mexican colleague, who had escaped before the rescue was conducted, were abducted by the assailants pretending to be patients while volunteering at Saint-Michel Catholic hospital in Chad’s Tandjile region.

Kuligowska was taken by helicopter to the nation’s capital, N’Djamena, and will soon be flown back to Poland. 

Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, Poland’s foreign minister said in a statement on X (formally known as Twitter), that “the Polish woman kidnapped in Chad is already safe and will soon return to the country. I address utmost thanks at this time to the French Defense Minister [Sébastien Lecornu] and French soldiers, thanks to whose help the Polish woman regained her freedom.”

Despite Kosiniak-Kamysz’s statement, a spokesperson for French Forces in the Sahel in a statement to AFP, made clear that Chadian forces had conducted the rescue and declined to comment on what part French forces played.