US television journalist Richard Engel has been freed after being kidnapped in Syria and held for five days, his employer, NBC News, said on Tuesday.
‘After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed,’ the network said in a statement. ‘We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country,’ it said. Engel, 39, is one of the most high-profile American journalists to report from Syria, where rebels have been fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
RUSSIANS KIDNAPPED
Russia said on Tuesday that two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria on a motorway from the port city of Tartus.
‘By all appearances, they are Russians,’ Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to the Central Asia state of Uzbekistan. He added that Russia was undertaking ‘all the necessary steps both in Syria and other countries’ to win the men’s release. Russia’s embassy in Damascus had earlier confirmed that two of the country’s workers had been abducted together with a man identified by the Italian media as Mario Belluomo.
‘Two Russians and an Italian were kidnapped on the road linking Tartus to Homs,’ the spokesman of the Russian embassy in Damascus Sergei Markov told state television. Neither the two Russians’ identity nor the circumstances of the abduction were released. The Russian embassy noted however that all three men worked for a privately-owned Syrian factory in Tartus, Interfax reported.
‘After being kidnapped and held for five days inside Syria by an unknown group, NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel and his production crew members have been freed unharmed,’ the network said in a statement. ‘We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country,’ it said. Engel, 39, is one of the most high-profile American journalists to report from Syria, where rebels have been fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
RUSSIANS KIDNAPPED
Russia said on Tuesday that two of its nationals along with an Italian steel worker had been abducted in Syria on a motorway from the port city of Tartus.
‘By all appearances, they are Russians,’ Russian news agencies quoted Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on a visit to the Central Asia state of Uzbekistan. He added that Russia was undertaking ‘all the necessary steps both in Syria and other countries’ to win the men’s release. Russia’s embassy in Damascus had earlier confirmed that two of the country’s workers had been abducted together with a man identified by the Italian media as Mario Belluomo.
‘Two Russians and an Italian were kidnapped on the road linking Tartus to Homs,’ the spokesman of the Russian embassy in Damascus Sergei Markov told state television. Neither the two Russians’ identity nor the circumstances of the abduction were released. The Russian embassy noted however that all three men worked for a privately-owned Syrian factory in Tartus, Interfax reported.