IRAQ: The elated family and friends of a US trucker held hostage in Iraq were planning a hero's welcome for the ex-farmer yesterday and said their prayers had been answered after he apparently escaped from his Iraqi captors.
Thomas Hamill's family rejoiced at word he was free after 23 days of captivity.
"I feel wonderful, it's the best feeling I've had. I am so ecstatic and I just want to thank everybody that has prayed and sent their prayers to us," Mr Hamill's tearful wife, Kellie, told KDKA radio, adding: "Thank you all so very much."
Hamill's grandmother, Vera, said: "I am so happy. I'm just praising the Lord all the time ... I knew that ... God would bring him back. I had faith he would. I just want to give him a good hug," she said in an interview with CNN, her voice breaking with emotion.
A US patrol found Mr Hamill (43) south of Tikrit and officers said he had apparently escaped. Mr Hamill, who worked for a subsidiary of the US company Halliburton, was captured after an assault on a convoy west of Baghdad on April 9th.
Mr Hamill was a struggling dairy farmer who went to Iraq to boost his family income. Footage of his capture was released and repeatedly broadcast on American television.
He was reportedly in good health yesterday apart from a gunshot wound to his arm that he had suffered during the ambush.
- (Reuters)