Journalists freed

Arauca, Colombia

Colombian rebels this week released an American photographer and a British reporter, the first foreign journalists to be abducted in four decades of civil war. Ruth Morris, 35, and photographer Scott Dalton, 34, were kidnapped at a roadblock on Jan. 21. Morris said the guerrillas guarded them at gunpoint, but helped carry their bags through the jungle. “It was clear they were given orders to treat us well,” she said. The journalists were working on a story for the Los Angeles Times on a recent rise in military clashes in Arauca, an oil-rich region teeming with leftist guerrillas. President Alvaro Uribe has vowed to take the area back. Seventy U.S. troops arrived there last month to train government soldiers to protect a key oil pipeline frequently blown up by rebels.

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