Journalist went on hunger strike during captivity

Journalist Yvonne Ridley says she went on hunger strike while held captive by the Taliban.

She says the hunger strike was the only weapon she had.

Ridley took the action from the moment of capture in Afghanistan because she was refused access to a telephone.

The 43-year-old Sunday Express reporter also told how she kept a secret diary using the inside of a box for a toothpaste tube and the inside of a soap wrapper, and was segregated from the other prisoners because she was so difficult.

Describing Sunday night's air raids on the Afghan capital, she writes: "When the night-time wave of attacks on Kabul started I was lying in bed and it was like fireworks being set off."

She told men who came in to take away a rocket-propelled grenade from under her bed that they might as well use bows and arrows for all the good it would do them.

"I was never physically hurt in any way. They tried to break me mentally by asking the same questions time and time again, day after day, sometimes until 9 o'clock at night."

Now she said she was far more fearful of what her mother had to say than anything the Taliban could do to her.

Mother Joyce, from Pelton, Co Durham, said: "This has been the worst day of our lives and the very best day. We have gone from the depths of despair to utter elation."

Hopes of imminent release had plunged after the US and British air strikes began on Sunday.