Kabul, Sep 9 (DPA) A New York Times reporter taken captive by the Taliban at the weekend in northern Afghanistan was freed, but his Afghan translator and a civilian were killed in a raid by international forces, a district governor said Wednesday.
The troops conducted the raid Tuesday night on the house where the two men were being held in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province, Chardarah Governor Abdul Wahid Omarkhel said.
A clash ensued, in which the translator and a woman were killed in the village of Mungtapa, Omarkhel said, but he could not say whether the two were killed by US forces or militants.
The Times confirmed the release of British-Irish national Stephen Farrell and his interpreter Sultan Munadi.
They were abducted Saturday by a group of armed men in Chardarah while visiting the site of a deadly NATO airstrike on two Taliban-hijacked fuel trucks.
Villagers said Munadi’s body was still in Mungtapa and local residents had asked his family to retrieve it.
The two journalists were talking to local villagers in the Omarkhel area to report the aftermath of a German military-approved airstrike conducted Friday by a US military jet that according to Omarkhel had killed 130 people, including civilians.
Farrell said in calls to a Times editor and reporter that he had been freed after soldiers conducted a fierce firefight with his captors that began with the sound of helicopters.
“There were bullets all around us,” he was quoted by the Times as saying.
He said Munadi was shot after the two men left the house where they were being held and Munadi stepped forward, shouting, “Journalist! Journalist!”
Farrell, who was not hurt, said he did not know whether the shots came from the soldiers or militants.
Tuesday’s rescue came around two and half months after David Rohde, another reporter for The New York Times, escaped from militants in a tribal area of Pakistan. Rohde and his Afghan interpreter were kidnapped from the central Afghan province of Logar while talking to local villagers.
