James Hider and Jerome Starkey in Kabul
The thump-thump of helicopters sounded shortly after midnight as the two journalists prepared to spend another night held captive, surrounded by Taleban fighters.
For Stephen Farrell of The New York Times, a former Middle East correspondent for The Times, delivery was at hand. For Sultan Munadi, his Afghan translator, death was just minutes away.
The two men had been captured on Saturday morning near the village of Omar Khel in northern Afghanistan, where they were reporting on a Nato airstrike that destroyed two petrol tankers hijacked by the Taleban, and which created a fireball that killed about 125 people, including villagers.
The local Taleban commander who seized them, Shams ud-Din, more brigand than ideologue, had been in and out of jail for years before throwing in his lot with the Islamist guerrillas. He had been attacking Nato convoys heading from Tajikistan to Kabul. (Read More)
