Troops Free Egyptian Captives, Employer Says

U.S. forces in Iraq stormed a house in Baghdad on Monday and freed two of the four Egyptian telecommunications engineers who were kidnapped Sunday, the head of their Egyptian parent company said.

Naguib Sawiris, chairman of Egypt’s Orascom Telecom, said U.S. troops raided a villa, possibly in the mainly Sunni Muslim district of Adhamiya, and freed the two. The other two managed to escape on their own from a car they had been locked in, he added.

“All four are free,” Sawiris said by telephone from Algeria. “The Americans caught one of the kidnappers.”

Sawiris said two of the men were in Orascom’s Baghdad office, and the others were in the fortified, U.S.-controlled Green Zone.

Earlier, Sawiris told CNN that the kidnappers had demanded $500,000 in ransom and that the ransom had not been met.

Also Monday, a statement purportedly from the militants who abducted an Italian journalist Friday said she would be released in a few days.

Giuliana Sgrena, a 56-year-old reporter for the Communist daily Il Manifesto, was kidnapped near Baghdad University.

A group calling itself the Islamic Jihad Organization claimed to have kidnapped the woman and gave Italy 72 hours to withdraw its troops from Iraq. But it made no threats to kill her nor said what would happen if its demands were not met.

“After the judicial committee of the Jihad Organization interrogated the Italian captive Giuliana Sgrena, it has been found that the Italian captive is not involved in spying for the infidels in Iraq,” the group said in a statement posted on a website that frequently carries messages from Islamic militants.

“In response to the appeal made by the Muslim Scholars’ Assn., we, in the Jihad Organization, will free the Italian captive in the next few days,” the statement added.

The authenticity of the text could not be verified.

Italian government officials and Sgrena’s colleagues have publicized the journalist’s pacifist convictions in the hope that doing so might help win her release.