Hopes grow for release of French hostages

Hopes grew tonight 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 and one of their employers saying 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.