Journalists held in Libya for 44 days survived a barrage of gunfire from Libyan soldiers that killed a colleague before they were captured.
Clare Morgana Gillis, 34, a reporter working for USA TODAY and The Atlantic, and James Foley, a reporter for the GlobalPost news agency, arrived at the Tunisian border Thursday evening after being released by the Libyan government. They were driven to the border by members of the Hungarian Embassy, which had assisted in their release.
"I feel fine, and I'm so happy to be on the other side, where I can talk freely," Gillis said from a hotel in Djerba, just over the border from Libya in Tunisia.
The arrival in Tunisia ends an odyssey that began April 5 when Gillis, Foley and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela were captured by forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi while they were covering a battle with rebels in the oil port of Brega.
Gillis said the three of them, plus a fourth journalist, photographer Anton Hammerl of South Africa, had gotten out of the taxi they had hired outside Brega and were walking on a road. Trucks then came racing down the road and fired at them.
She said they all ran into some bushes to the side and laid down. The trucks stopped and continued to fire at them. Hammerl was shot in the abdomen and was bleeding badly, Gillis said.
"It all happened in a split second. We thought we were in the crossfire. But, eventually, we realized they were shooting at us. You could see and hear the bullets hitting the ground near us," Foley told the GlobalPost. "I thought instinctively that we were all going to get killed, so I jumped up to surrender and screamed that we were journalists.
An Al Jazeera cameraman was killed in an apparent murder in Libya in mid-March, ambushed while en route to the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi. The following month, two veteran conflict photographers, Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington, were killed in a blast while documenting a battle near the western city of Misurata. And four New York Times journalists narrowly escaped death when they were caught in the crossfire on the opposite end of the country. The group was released safely on March 21 following a harrowing week-long captivity. While they were in detention, the group reported, they were blindfolded, beaten, and psychologically brutalized by Gadhafi soldiers. Their driver, meanwhile, is presumed to have been killed after his capture.
For Hammerl, the end apparently came during a sudden gun battle near the town of Brega, where he came under fire while he and other journalists--American reporters Clare Morgana Gillis and James Wright Foley; and Spanish photographer Manuel Varela de Seijas Brabo--were embedded with a cadre of rebels.
"We heard Anton call out, 'Help,' and I think it was Jim said, 'Is everybody OK?' Anton said, 'No, I've been hit.' The shooting started and they were coming closer. We ducked back down, we couldn't look back up. And then they were right there," Gillis, 34, recalled to The Atlantic, which was one of the outlets that had hired her on to cover the Libyan conflict. "They just came over and started knocking us around. They took away our stuff, tied us up, threw us in the back of the truck. And we all looked down at Anton. I saw him not moving and in a pool of blood. Jim tried to talk to him -- 'Are you OK?' -- and he didn't answer anymore."
Foley, a reporter for the Boston-based GlobalPost, recounted that he and his colleagues purposely concealed Hammerl's death during the course of their captivity, which took them through various detention centers and, at one point for Gillis, a luxury hotel. (A British journalist who had been separately detained was also released Thursday, according to GlobalPost.
Hammerl was the closest to the soldiers and was shot during the attack. Foley told GlobalPost that he, Gillis and their companion, Spanish photographer Manu Brabo, surrendered and as they were taken away they saw Hammerl's body, with a stomach wound, lying lifelessly in the sand.
Hammerl's fate was unknown until Thursday, when Foley and Gillis communicated news of his death to his family. They were captured and he was killed on April 5.
"From the moment Anton disappeared in Libya we have lived in hope as the Libyan officials assured us that they had Anton," read a statement from Hammerl's family posted on Facebook. "It is intolerably cruel that Gaddafi loyalists have known Anton's fate all along and chose to cover it up."
Foley had been shuffled from one detention center to another with little information making its way out of Libya during his capture.
His parents, John and Diane, waged a campaign in the media and with government officials to bring him home. They spoke to him by phone when he was freed.
"We were overjoyed to get a telephone call from Jim shortly after his release today in Tripoli," Diane Foley said in a statement Wednesday. "He told me he was well and looking forward to coming home. We are extraordinarily grateful to the many people who have worked on his release and we hope to have him home as soon as possible.
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