Portuguese journalist released

A Portuguese journalist kidnapped in southern Iraq by unidentified men has been released. Carlos Raleiras was kidnapped on 14 November near Basra and set free unharmed a day later. "We are delighted that Mr Raleiras has been released unharmed. He has expressed his gratitude to the Coalition forces and the Iraqi Police for their efforts to bring about his release," Capt Shay Marks of the British 20 Armoured Brigade of the Coalition forces told IRIN in Basra. Raleiras was kidnapped in daylight near Al-Zubayr, about 15 km southwest of Basra. During the attack, a colleague received a gunshot wound and received treatment in a British military hospital. His two other travelling companions were unhurt. The journalists were heading north from the Kuwaiti border to Basra when the attack occurred. When one of the jeeps failed to stop, the assailants opened fire, wounding Maria Joao Ruela, a reporter with the Portuguese television channel Sociedade Independente de Comunicacao (SIC). According to details published by the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the foreign editor of the SIC station, Martim Cabral, said the attackers had forced Ruela, her cameraman, Rui do O, and Carlos Raleiras, a reporter for the Portuguese radio station TSF, out of their jeep. The assailants then pushed Raleiras back into the jeep and sped away in it, he said. Cabral said Iraqi civilians had later picked up the two journalists and taken them to Basra, where British medics treated Ruela for her injuries. She was said to be in a stable condition. The two other jeeps in the convoy eluded the attackers and fled to Basra unharmed. TSF's website reported that its editors had managed to contact Raleiras on his cell phone, and that he told them he had been kidnapped, but was in good health. The abductors had reportedly demanded a ransom, which some television reports put at US $50,000. Coalition troops and Iraqi police intervened and helped to obtain his release. Meanwhile, the incident has not deterred Ralerias and his colleagues from continuing their reporting, and on Monday he left with his group for the city of Nasiriyah for several days of filming. "We are staying here as we have a job to do and we have to inform people of what is happening here," a fellow Portuguese journalist, Domingos de Andrade, told IRIN from Nasiriyah. The CPJ had issued a statement saying that it was alarmed at the abduction as it had been the latest in a string of such attacks. At least 12 journalists have been killed in Iraq to date since March 2003.