French hostage released, back home to Paris

The French journalist Florence Obeina and her Iraqi guide Hussein Hanoun al-Saadi, were released five months of detention in Iraq.

The French ambassador Bernard Bajouli said that a plane carrying Obeina took off from Baghdad, adding that "Liberation" paper journalist was slimmer than that day in which she arrived in Baghdad, but we were surprised she was "pleased and happy."

The French foreign ministry said he expects Obeina to have had arrived to a military base in the outskirts of Paris, while "the Liberation" paper for which Obeina works said that she was released on Saturday but gave no more details. The French President Jacque Chirac thanked the officials who worked in "grave and difficult atmospheres" to release her.

Obeina, 44 years old, was kidnapped on January 5, while she was preparing a report on the sufferings of the Iraqis of Falluja who were displaced from their houses by the American invasion.

Obeina is considered one of the most senior journalists of the leftist trend. She worked for this paper for 18 years. She carried out dangerous reports in Rwanda, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Algeria and wrote several books including "a message to an Iraqi friend." Obeina had left Iraq left behind a series of attacks that resulted during the two past days in killing 40 persons including 8 American soldiers while 11 Iraqis were killed working in the building sector, as well as three ministry of the interior men when a suicide bomber detonated himself after he had infiltrated to the barrack.