Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has been released in Iraq, a month after she was seized at gunpoint on a Baghdad street, Italy's foreign ministry said today.
"I can confirm it 100 per cent," said Margherita Boniver, an undersecretary at the Italian foreign ministry. "She should board a plane in the coming hours and should be back in Rome later tonight."
The 57-year-old Sgrena, who works for the Rome-based daily Il Manifesto, was kidnapped on February 4. Insurgents later released a video of her sobbing and wringing her hands as she pleaded for Italian troops to be pulled out of Iraq.
Ms Sgrena was one of two female Western journalists abducted in Baghdad this year. Florence Aubenas of France's Liberationwas seized along with her Iraqi driver on January 5.
Ms Aubenas appeared in a videotape distributed by her captors this week, looking distraught and exhausted.
More than 150 foreigners, including several Western journalists, have been seized by insurgents over the past year. Most have been freed but many have been killed, sometimes in beheadings that were filmed and posted on the Internet.
The kidnappings have highlighted the lawlessness gripping large areas of Iraq where insurgents mount frequent attacks, crime is rife and Iraqi forces have little control.