Stephen Farrell, a reporter for The New York Times.is shown in Iraq on July 16, 2007. Commandos freed the New York Times reporter Wednesday Sept. 9, 2009, after he was kidnapped by militants in northern Afghanistan last week, the paper said.
A British journalist kidnapped by the Taleban has been freed by UK Special Forces in a pre-dawn raid in northern Afghanistan – but his Afghan colleague and a British commando were killed in the operation.
Stephen Farrell, who was working for the New York Times, was taken hostage on Saturday when he travelled to the site of an air strike in Kunduz which left up to 125 people dead.
His Afghan colleague, Mohammad Sultan Munadi, was killed in the crossfire, officials said today.
Moments after the raid Mr Farrell told his American colleagues: “We were all in a room, the Talebs all ran, it was obviously a raid. We thought they would kill us. We thought should we go out.”
The Times kept the kidnappings quiet out of concern for the men's safety, and other media outlets, including The Associated Press, did not report the abductions following a request from the Times.
A story posted on the Times' Web site quoted Farrell saying he had been "extracted" by a commando raid carried out by "a lot of soldiers" in a firefight.
British Special Forces dropped down from helicopters early Wednesday onto the house where the two were being kept, and a gunbattle ensued.
A Taliban commander who was in the house was killed, along with the owner of the house and a woman who was inside, Yowar said. He said Sultan was killed in the midst of the firefight.
Farrell, a dual Irish-British citizen, told the Times that he saw Munadi step forward shouting "Journalist! Journalist!" but he then fell in a volley of bullets. Farrell said he did not know if the shots came from militants or the rescuing forces.
Moments later, Farrell said he heard British voices and shouted, "British hostage!" The British voices told him to come over. As he did, Mr. Farrell said he saw Mr. Munadi.
Munadi, in his early 30s, was employed by The New York Times starting in 2002, according to his colleagues. He left the company a few years later to work for a local radio station.
Farrell was the second Times journalist to be kidnapped in Afghanistan in a year.
In June, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Rohde and his Afghan colleague Tahir Ludin escaped from their Taliban captors in northwestern Pakistan. They had been abducted Nov. 10 south of the Afghan capital of Kabul and were moved across the border.
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