A pre-dawn commando raid 8 September by British paratroopers to rescue two NY Times reporters from their Taliban kidnappers in Kunduz province of Afghanistan ended in the release of the British-Irish journalist, Stephen Farrell, and the death of his Afghan colleague and interpreter, Sultan Munadi. A British paratrooper, an Afghan soldier, the owner of the house the hostages were being held in, and an unidentified woman, reportedly the house owner’s sister-in-law, were also killed.
Farrell and Munadi were captured 5 September when they were in a Taliban-controlled area without a military escort investigating the airstrike on two hijacked fuel tankers ordered by Nato troops 4 September in which up to 90 people were killed, many of them civilians taking fuel from the trucks, which were stuck in the river.
The commando raid was praised by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, but some commentators say that negotiations were underway with the kidnappers, and their release was imminent. Farrell was briefly held by insurgents while working for the The Times in Iraq in 2004. The Guardian,Kansas City Star, NY Times
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News story, GenevaLunch, 10 September 2009.
Filed under: World news
Tags: Afghanistan, airstrike, British national, fuel tanker, Gordon Brown, interpreter, Iraq, Irish national, jurnalists, Kunduz, Nato, NY Times, paratroopers, prime minister, Stephen Farrell, Sultan Munadi, Taliban, UK, United Kingdom