James Hider and Jerome Starkey in Kabul and Michael Evans, Defence Editor
Taleban fighters who abducted the British journalist Stephen Farrell told him they expected him to be freed within two weeks, shortly before British special forces raided the compound where he was being held.
One commando and Mr Farrell’s translator were killed in the night-time rescue, along with scores of Taleban. The militants had warned the translator, Sultan Munadi, that he might share the fate of other captured Afghans and be beheaded, Mr Farrell wrote inThe New York Times yesterday, hours after he was rescued.
Negotiators in Kabul insist that they were close to securing the release of the two hostages, captured last Saturday while reporting on a Nato airstrike that killed as many as 125 people, many of them civilians, in Kunduz province.
US reports said that the hostages’ employer, The New York Times, had asked for Nato-led forces in Afghanistan to refrain from any military operations while negotiations were seen to be making progress. But the British command feared that the two men could have been transferred to Pakistan, 150 miles to the south, where Nato forces would be unable to free them. (Read More)
