A British journalist held for two months by kidnappers in the southern Iraqi city of Basra was rescued today by Iraqi forces.
Richard Butler, a photographer on assignment for the US network CBS, appeared to be in good health and high spirits after his release. Unknown militants had seized Butler and his interpreter from their hotel in the centre of Basra. The interpreter was freed within days.
A still of freed British journalist Richard Butler
The rescue was a triumph for Iraqi forces, embarrassed last month by a hasty crackdown against militants in Basra that triggered fighting across the south and Baghdad while failing to dislodge masked militiamen from the streets.
"The Iraqi army stormed the house and overcame my guards and then burst through the door," said Butler, smiling broadly and surrounded by Iraqi officials in pictures shown on Iraqiya state television.
"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," he added.
But the news came after a night of renewed clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City slum that dashed hopes of its 2 million residents of a let-up in three weeks of fighting.
Angry mourners carried a coffin containing the body of a man killed in the clashes through the slum's streets. A hospital said seven wounded casualties had arrived overnight. Residents swept out the rubble from freshly damaged buildings.
U.S. forces said they had killed six gunmen in an overnight battle in eastern Baghdad, returning fire with M1 tanks and helicopter gunships at fighters who attacked a patrol with rocket-propelled grenades.
Elsewhere in the capital, an explosion in central Baghdad's Tayaran Square killed five people and wounded nine, police said, and an overnight roadside bomb attack on a U.S. patrol set a market ablaze.