Richard Engel, NBC Foreign Reporter Freed After Firefight At Checkpoint In Syria: Two Pro-Assad Militia Kidnappers Dead

NBC's Foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, two of his colleagues and their security guard were "freed from captors in Syria after a firefight at a checkpoint on Monday, five days of captivity. The names of the abductors are unknown.

NBC released a statement saying that the kidnappers "were not believed to be loyal to the Assad regime," however, after crossing into Turkey, Engel reported on NBC's morning show saying that his captors were members of the pro-Assad "Shabiha" militia. Engel opened up about his ordeal and said, "They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government," he added, "We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people... they captured us in order to carry out this exchange."

According to NBC, during the firefight at checkpoint, two of the captors were killed in the shootout at the checkpoint manned by a Syrian rebel group, the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, and an Islamic Salafist. Engel is not the only Western journalist to be kidnapped, several other reportes have been detained by the Assad's regime after they banned independent reporting inside Syria.