This undated picture provided on December 6, 2014 by the Gift of the Givers charity group shows South African Pierre Korkie. South African hostage Pierre Korkie has been killed on December 6, 2014 in a failed raid to free captives held by Al-Qaeda militants in Yemen, with his death coming a day before he was to be released after more than a year in captivity. Pierre Korkie was seized along with his wife in May 2013 in Yemen's second city of Taiz by members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The couple from the central South African city of Bloemfontein had worked as teachers in Yemen for four years at the time of their capture. AFP PHOTO / COURTESY OF GIFT OF THE GIVERS GROUP
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Do S. Africans blame US for hostage's death?
03:29 - Source: CNN

Story highlights

NEW: Yolande Korkie says she feels immense relief now that her husband's suffering is over

"What will it help to accuse? Will it bring Pierre back?" she asks

Her husband was killed in a failed U.S. military rescue operation

Johannesburg CNN  — 

The wife of slain South African hostage Pierre Korkie has said she chooses to forgive those who caused his death during a botched rescue attempt in Yemen.

“Today we are here to choose,” Yolande Korkie said Tuesday. “To choose to forgive those that caused Pierre’s death. What will it help to accuse? What will it help to find out what happened? Will it bring Pierre back? We choose to let it go,” she said.

Pierre Korkie was killed Friday in Yemen when the U.S. military launched a failed raid to rescue another hostage, American photojournalist Luke Somers, who also was killed.

Read: South African taught poor children

Yolande Korkie said “all is God’s will” as she discussed the failed U.S. military mission.

An undated photo of South African Pierre Korkie.

She expressed her gratitude to the United States for bringing her husband’s remains home and was philosophical when asked about regrets.

“We have lost, but one can never regret when you have lived with people that have nothing,” she said.

She also thanked South Africans for the “voice of prayer” that went up for her husband’s safe release, even if those prayers were not answered in the way they and the family wanted.

Luke Somers, 33, an American photojournalist was kidnapped over a year ago.

Growing emotional, she said: “I had visualized something different, we had visualized him holding us in his arms, and hearing his soft voice.

“But this morning, when we arrived, there was immense relief that this suffering for him was finished. … We may not have him physically, but in our hearts, he will never die.”

He has been an amazing husband and an amazing father to his two children, she said.

Yolande and Pierre Korkie were kidnapped in Yemen’s Taiz province in May of last year, the nongovernmental organization Gift of the Givers said.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula freed Yolande Korkie in January, after negotiations with Gift of the Givers, and was to release her husband Sunday, the group said on its site.

CNN’s Brent Swails reported from Johannesburg, and Richard Allen Green wrote from London.