An Iraqi Shi'ite group says kidnappers have freed an Iraqi interpreter taken hostage with a British journalist in southern Iraq recently.
The office of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr says the interpreter was released Wednesday in the southern city of Basra. Gunmen had seized the interpreter and his British colleague from a Basra hotel on Sunday.
Al-Sadr's office in Basra said earlier that it had reached a deal with the kidnappers for the release of both hostages, who work for the U.S. television network CBS. It was not clear when the British journalist would be freed.
In other news, the U.S. military says coalition forces have detained the administrator of a Baghdad psychiatric hospital suspected of supplying patient information to al-Qaida in Iraq.
The military says the Al-Rashad hospital official, who was not identified, was detained in connection with the February 1 bombings of two pet markets in Baghdad that killed almost 100 people.
The U.S. military says coalition forces detained the administrator at his office Sunday and thoroughly searched the facility.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have accused al-Qaida of carrying out the attacks by detonating explosives strapped to two mentally disabled women.
Also Wednesday, the military says coalition forces killed two terrorists and detained three suspects during operations against al-Qaida in central Iraq.
