French hostages ‘alive’ as headscarf ban enforced

HOPES grew last night for the release of two French journalists held hostage in Iraq, with France’s foreign minister saying he had received word that they were alive.

One of their employers also said that their kidnappers have handed them over to another group.

Jean de Belot, managing editor of Le Figaro newspaper, said the militants who claimed to be holding the reporters, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot, had handed them over to an Iraqi Sunni Muslim opposition group.