Libya to release four New York Times journalists

Libya said it will free four employees from the New York Times who had been captured by soldiers allied with Moammar Gaddafi.

The journalists – comprising Beirut bureau chief Anthony Shadid, reporter Stephen Farrell and photographers Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario -- were covering the Libyan conflict had not been heard from since Tuesday.

Reportedly, the four crossed into Libya without visas over the Egyptian border.

They entered the country illegally and when the army, when they liberated the city of Ajdabiya from the terrorists and they found her, they arrest her because you know, foreigners in this place, Seif al-Islam, Gaddafi's son, told ABC News interview, in an apparent reference to Addario.

But then they were happy because they found out she is American, not European. And thanks to that, she will be free tomorrow.”

One of the four, Farrell, has once been kidnapped by Taliban soldiers forces in Afghanistan two years ago prior to his rescue by British commandos.

“We’re all, families and friends, overjoyed to know they are safe,” said Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times. “We are eager to have them free and back home.”