A British hostage being held in Afghanistan has been freed following a pre-dawn raid by Nato troops, according to reports, but a British soldier and his Afghan interpreter were killed during the operation.
Stephen Farrell, a journalist for the New York Times, and the interpreter he was working with were kidnapped on Saturday while attempting to visit the scene of a Nato air strike in northern Afghanistan.
Mohammad Sami Yowar, a spokesman for the Kunduz governor, confirmed the rescue by British Special Forces and said that the translator was killed. Military officials told the Associated Press a British commando was also killed in the raid.
According to the New York Times an Afghan journalist who spoke to villagers in the area said that civilians, including women and children, were also killed in the battle.
Farrell, 46, disappeared from northern province of Kunduz on Saturday. German troops had fired on hijacked fuel tankers the day before, killing as many as 70 civilians, and many reporters traveled to the region.
He has been quoted in a story on the New York Times website saying he had been "extracted" by a commando raid carried out by "a lot of soldiers" in a firefight.
"We were all in a room, the Talibs all ran, it was obviously a raid," Farrell told a New York Times reporter in Kabul. "We thought they would kill us. We thought should we go out."
Farrell said as he and his interpreteri ran outside, he heard voices. "There were bullets all around us. I could hear British and Afghan voices."
At the end of a wall, Farrell said Munadi went forward, shouting: "Journalist! Journalist!" but dropped in a hail of bullets. "I dived in a ditch," said Farrell, who said he did not know whether the shots had come from allied or militant fire.
After a minute or two, Farrell said he heard more British voices and shouted, "British hostage!" The British voices told him to come over. As he did, Farrell said he saw Munadi's body.
"He was lying in the same position as he fell... That's all I know. I saw him go down in front of me. He did not move. He's dead. He was so close, he was just two feet in front of me when he dropped."
Farrell first contacted the New York Times in a brief telephone call at 12.30am this morning, telling the foreign editor of the newspaper: "I'm out! I'm free!"
Yesterday Angela Merkel said her government deeply regretted the death of Afghan civilians in the controversial air strike ordered by German commanders that Farrell had gone to cover.
The German chancellor's comments came as Nato acknowledged for the first time that Afghan civilians were among those killed when German commanders called in US jets to attack two stolen oil tankers near Kunduz on Friday. The death toll has not been established, but Afghan Rights Monitor, a national watchdog group, said that between 60 and 70 villagers had been killed.
A statement from the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force said that commanders originally believed the tankers were surrounded only by Taliban insurgents, but a subsequent review showed "civilians also were killed and injured in the strike".
The air strike – the deadliest military operation German troops have been involved in since the second world war – has caused a rift between German and US authorities over the conduct of the war, and prompted a fierce reaction from the Afghan government. The new US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, who had sought to distance himself from the incident, today appointed a Canadian general to investigate the incident.
Farrell is the second New York Times journalist to be kidnapped in Afghanistan in a year.
In June, David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and his Afghan colleague Tahir Ludin escaped from their Taliban captors in northwestern Pakistan. They had been abducted south of the Afghan capital of Kabul on November 10, and were moved across the border.