Hostages' release a mystery

By Roland Buerk
BBC News, Kabul

US and Afghan soldiers carried out raids on Monday

The hostages' ordeal seems to have ended almost where it began.

Annetta Flanigan from Northern Ireland, Filipino diplomat Angelito Nayan and Shqipe Habibi from Kosovo were handed over to the United Nations in a street in western Kabul shortly after dawn.

It was barely a mile from where they were kidnapped nearly four weeks ago.

The area is normally busy with hawkers selling fruit from wheeled barrows, one side of the street is lined with shops and there is a large roundabout nearby.

But in the early morning there were few people about.

Mystery drop

Mohammed Alam Ahmadi was opening up his pharmacy and says he was one of the few eyewitnesses.

They came in a Toyota Corolla, a white car, then they got into a UNHCR car and they were gone Mohammed Alam Ahmadi, eyewitness

"I saw three people, the UN workers who were kidnapped," he told the BBC as he served customers from behind his glass counter.

"I recognised them from the TV. They came in a Toyota Corolla, a white car, then they got into a UNHCR car and they were gone."

The UN and Afghanistan's government have refused to confirm the exact circumstances of the release and the events of the night remain shrouded in something of a mystery.

Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali said the hostages were "abandoned" and that no terms were met.

Mr Jalali also said a series of military operations led to the hostages freedom.

In the early hours of Monday soldiers burst their way into two houses in north Kabul.

They used explosives to blow holes in the walls, before carrying out a search so thorough it left doors smashed off their hinges and shattered glass on the floors.

Later on the same day, said Mr Jalali, there was another operation in a rural area to the north of Kabul that left one suspected kidnapper dead and four more seriously injured.

Prisoners freed?

But the government's account has been contradicted by a man claiming to be a spokesman for the Army of Muslims, the splinter faction of the Taleban that said it was holding the three UN workers.

Jalali: "The kidnappers' terms were not met"

He said the authorities had agreed to free 24 Taleban prisoners in return for the hostages' lives.

Shortly after the kidnapping some security experts doubted the militant group was capable of such an audacious attack.

The UN workers were seized from their car in a busy street in the centre of Kabul by armed men and driven away at speed. Regardless of who was holding the hostages and how their freedom was achieved it has led to much relief in Kabul.

The kidnapping, and an earlier suicide bombing on a popular shopping street that left a young American woman and an Afghan child dead, had caused many aid agencies to reassess their security measures.

Some staff were forbidden to leave their compounds unless their journeys were essential.

And last Thursday the most popular bar in town, the Elbow Room, was evacuated amid fears of an attack.

On the evening of the hostages' release the same bar was busy once again with customers.

The three UN workers themselves were elsewhere in the capital, at an undisclosed location, recovering from their time in captivity.