Polish journalist abducted in Syria in July is alive

   
A Polish journalist who was taken hostage by Islamist militants in northwest Syria in July is alive, Poland's foreign minister said on Saturday.    

Marcin Suder was abducted from an opposition media office in the rebel-held town of Saraqeb in Idlib province. He was working alone for Polish photo agency Studio Melon.    

Asked about Suder's fate Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told radio RMF FM, "He's alive."    

He declined to give any other details.    

Poland has set up a team of specialists based in Warsaw and its embassies in the Middle East to deal with Suder's case. He is the only Pole to have been taken hostage in the two-and-a-half year conflict in Syria that has killed more than 100,000.    

Syria is the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, the Committee to Protect Journalists says, with at least 39 killed and 21 kidnapped in 2012 by both rebels and government forces.    

Most kidnapped journalists have been released but several remain missing.                

On another note, Syria's government has raised the price of gasoline and transportation in its latest wartime austerity move, a step likely to increase hardship for many Syrians already suffering from the economic consequences of civil war.           

The price hike was announced late Friday as international weapons inspectors continued their task of identifying chemical weapons sites in the country as a first step to scrapping Syria's chemical arsenal, amid reports of new fighting in a government-dominated province along the Mediterranean coast.           

Syria has been importing gasoline to make up for a shortfall in local production, interrupted by the 2 -year conflict. It last raised the price of gasoline in May. 

Meanwhile, UN experts sped out of their Damascus hotel in three cars, as they continued their mission to scrap Syria's capacity to manufacture chemical weapons by Nov. 1 and to destroy President Bashar Assad's entire stockpile by mid-2014.           

Their mission was endorsed by a UN Security Council resolution last month. 

Violence also continued across Syria, including in a vulnerable Sunni community in Tartous province dominated by the Assad regime's Alawites sect. Syria's civil war has cleaved along the country's sectarian patchwork, and the country's Sunnis dominate the revolt.

Two Syrian human rights groups reported that the village of al-Mitras was heavily shelled on Saturday.  

Rami Abdul-Rahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which follows a network of activists in the field, said the shelling began early dawn after rebels were spotted in the area.

He said he feared regime militias would rush into the isolated village of several thousand people and attack residents after the shelling subsided, citing similar incidents earlier this year in two nearby Sunni communities in the same province.


AP/REUTERS