WASHINGTON: An Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group has released an American journalist held captive in Syria for nearly two years, senior US officials said on Sunday.

“We are all relieved and grateful knowing that Peter Theo Curtis is coming home after so much time held in the clutches of Jabhat al-Nusrah,” said US Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Just as we celebrate Theo’s freedom, we hold in our thoughts and prayers the Americans who remain in captivity in Syria,” said US National Security Adviser Susan E. Rice.

Also read: Militants behead US journalist

Mr Kerry said that in the last two years, the United States had “reached out to more than two dozen countries asking for urgent help from anyone who might have tools, influence, or leverage to help secure Theo’s release and the release of any Americans held hostage in Syria”.

Al Qaeda kidnapped Mr Curtis near the Syria-Turkey border in October 2012. The Nusrah Front, which kept Mr Curtis, has broken with the more radical group called the Islamic State in Iraq and Al Sham (ISIS).

ISIS beheaded another American journalist, James W. Foley, in Syria last week. He was kidnapped a month after Mr Curtis. The group also posted images of his execution on YouTube.

“Notwithstanding today’s welcome news, the events of the past week shocked the conscience of the world,” said Ms Rice while pledging to “continue to use all of the tools at our disposal to see that the remaining American hostages are freed”.

A family friend told The New York Times that Mr Curtis, who is a Bostonian, was handed over to a United Nations representative.

Al Qaeda and its affiliates are still holding three Americans — two men and a woman. ISIS, which beheaded Mr Foley, has threatened to behead Steven J. Sotloff, also a journalist, as well if its demands are not met.

Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2014