British journalist held for two months by kidnappers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was rescued yesterday by Iraqi forces sweeping through the city in a crackdown on militants, the Iraqi military said.
Richard Butler, a photographer working for the US network CBS, appeared in good health and high spirits after his release. Unknown militants had seized him and his interpreter from their hotel in Basra, freeing the interpreter a few days later.
"The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards and then burst through the door," said Mr Butler, smiling broadly and surrounded by Iraqi officials on Iraqiya state TV.
"I had my hood on, which I had to have on all the time. And they shouted something at me and I pulled my hood off."
In northern Iraq, a suicide attack and two car bombs killed 18 people. Among the dead were 12 members of Iraq's Kurdish Peshmerga security force who were in a truck near the Syrian border when a car bomb exploded as they passed by, police said.
An explosion in central Baghdad's Tayaran Square killed five people and wounded nine, police said, while a roadside bomb attack on a US patrol set a market ablaze.
CBS welcomed Mr Butler's release. "We are incredibly grateful that our colleague, Richard Butler, has been released and is safe," the network said in a statement.
Lieutenant-General Mohan al-Furaiji, commander of Iraqi armed forces in Basra, said a special team had been set up to search for a policeman suspected of being behind the kidnapping.
Lt-Gen. Furaiji, who was shown smiling widely on TV with his arm on the freed photographer's shoulder, told reporters Iraqi forces searching for weapons had stumbled upon Mr Butler when they entered a house in Basra's central Jbela district.
"We were suspicious about a house with a guard standing outside. We arrested the guard, entered the house and found the British journalist handcuffed and hooded," he said.
Elements of Iraq's police force are often accused of cooperating with militants.
But the rescue was a triumph for Iraqi security forces, embarrassed last month by a hasty crackdown on gunmen in Basra that sparked fighting across the south and Baghdad while failing to dislodge masked Mehdi Army militiamen from the streets.
The kidnapping of Richard Butler, one of the few Westerners who dared venture out in Basra without a military convoy, was a symbol of the rampant lawlessness in a city that controls Iraq's only port and 80 per cent of its oil revenue.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says 51 journalists have been kidnapped in Iraq since 2004, with 12 of those killed.