reasons . `` We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives , '' the paper quoted Executive Editor Bill Keller as saying Wednesday . Farrell called the newspaper 's foreign editor before dawn and said he was `` extracted '' in a commando raid after a fierce firefight , according to a report on the Times Web site . `` There were bullets all around us . I could hear British and Afghan voices , '' Farrell , a 46-year-old dual Irish-British citizen , told the paper . Farrell and Munadi ran outside during the firefight . At the end of a wall , Munadi went forward , shouting : `` Journalist ! Journalist ! '' but dropped in a hail of bullets , Farrell said . He did n't know whether the shots came from allied or militant fire . `` I saw him go down in front of me . He did not move . He 's dead , '' Farrell told the paper . `` He was so close , he was just 2 feet in front of me when he dropped . '' Farrell 's citizenship played a
KABUL , Afghanistan -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- A New York Times reporter who was kidnapped last week was freed Wednesday in a pre-dawn military raid in Afghanistan that left a British commando , an Afghan journalist and several others dead . New York Times reporter Stephen Farrell was abducted Saturday while covering a NATO airstrike in Afghanistan . Stephen Farrell was rescued by NATO 's International Security Assistance Force , known as the ISAF , the British Foreign Office said . A British commando died in the operation , the country 's Ministry of Defense said without offering further details . Sultan Munad , an Afghan journalist accompanying Farrell , also was killed in the raid , British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said . Crossfire during the raid also killed a woman and a child , said Abdel Wahid Omar Khil , governor of Kunduz district , in Kunduz province , where the rescue took place . Armed gunmen kidnapped the journalists Saturday while they were covering a NATO airstrike on Taliban forces the day before that killed at least 90 people in the northern Kunduz province . Neither CNN nor the Times had reported Farrell 's kidnapping for security