LONDON, Oct. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- British newspaper the Guardian announced Thursday its journalist, who was abducted in Iraq on Wednesday, has been freed.

    The news of Rory Carroll, a 33-year-old Irish who has been working for the British newspaper in Iraq for nine months, came in a telephone call from Carroll to his parents at their home in Dublin, the paper said in its website.

    "He told me that he had been released, that he was perfectly Okand in an Iraqi government compound having a beer," Carroll's father Jo was quoted by the paper as saying.

    "I am safe and well and I have all my limbs on. I was in my cell and representatives of the Iraqi government came for me. They had a government car waiting. I have been in Baghdad all the time," Carroll was quoted as telling his father.

    Carroll had been conducting an interview with a victim of Saddam's regime when gunmen confronted him outside the house where the conversation had taken place, the newspaper said.

    He was one of more than 200 foreigners kidnapped by militants in Iraq. Some 40 of them have been killed.

    The incident came on the first anniversary of the abduction in Iraq of Dublin-born aid worker Margaret Hassain, who is also a British citizen. The 59-year-old woman was kidnapped by men dressed in police uniforms and later was killed. Enditem