Commandos free NYT journalist in Afghanistan

A New York Times reporter held by the Taliban in Afghanistan was freed during a dramatic airborne commando raid on Wednesday in which his Afghan colleague was killed, officials and the newspaper said.

Gunmen snatched Stephen Farrell, who is Irish, and Sultan Munadi, on Saturday while they were reporting on the aftermath of a NATO air strike that killed civilians and dozens of insurgents in the northern province of Kunduz.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has around 64,500 troops based in Afghanistan from more than 40 nations fighting against a Taliban-led insurgency, confirmed his release.

"Early this morning, joint forces from ISAF and Afghanistan entered a series of compounds in Kunduz and rescued the New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell," an ISAF spokesman told AFP.

Farrell was unhurt during the operation but his interpreter -- a 34-year-old father of two who was working in Afghanistan on a break from university studies in Germany -- was killed.

In a brief telephone call Farrell, 46, told Susan Chira, the foreign editor of The New York Times: "I?m out! I?m free!" the newspaper reported.

"Farrell told her that he had been 'extracted' by a commando raid carried out by 'a lot of soldiers' in a fierce firefight with his captors. Mr. Farrell said he had also called his wife," the newspaper reported.

Until now, the kidnapping had been kept quiet by the newspaper and most major news organisations out of concern for the men?s safety.

In a second phone call to a New York Times reporter in Kabul, Farrell said he and his captors heard the thumping sound of approaching helicopters before the dramatic rescue.

"We were all in a room, the Talibs all ran, it was obviously a raid," Farrell said. "We thought they would kill us. We thought should we go out."

Farrell said as he and Munadi ran outside, he heard voices. "There were bullets all around us. I could hear British and Afghan voices."

The Afghan governor in Kunduz had said it was a US military operation.

"Last night in a US special forces operation in Chardara district, they managed to free Stephen Farrell but the Afghan journalist Sultan Mohammad was killed by Taliban during the operation," said Kunduz governor Mohammad Omar.

Farrell was the second foreign correspondent working for the New York Times to be kidnapped in Afghanistan in less than a year.

David Rohde and a local reporter were abducted outside Kabul with their driver last November, but escaped in June, according to the newspaper.

Farrell is an experienced reporter who has worked for the New York Times during the war in Iraq and was formerly Middle East correspondent for Britain's The Times newspaper.

Recent weeks have been bloody for journalists covering the conflict in Afghanistan, where a Taliban insurgency is now at its most virulent in the eight years since the 2001 US-led invasion ousted their extremist regime.

In August, three journalists working for US-based media were wounded in roadside bomb blasts in the country -- a correspondent with CBS Radio News, and a photographer and videographer working for the Associated Press.