Two female Italian aid workers arrived back in Rome late Tuesday after being released from a three-week hostage ordeal in Iraq, sparking scenes of joy at their homes and relief among world leaders.
Simona Torretta and Simona Pari, both 29, arrived at Rome's Ciampino military airport to be showered with hugs and flowers by their families and colleagues from their aid agency, A Bridge to Baghdad.
Their relatives and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi boarded the Italian air force plane to welcome them, and a host of leading politicians turned out to greet them.
The women, who were seized by armed men on September 7 at their Baghdad offices, stepped off the plane smiling broadly and wearing light-coloured long tunics. They crossed the tarmac holding hands and looking relaxed.
"We're fine," they told waiting reporters.
They did not comment on their three weeks in captivity, simply telling their family and friends "we were always well-treated."
Simona Torretta fell into her mother's arms, apologising for having made her suffer. "Mum, I'm sorry I made you suffer. Excuse me for all this pain," a member of the family quoted her as saying.
After spending a short time with their families the two Simonas were taken for questioning by the Rome magistrates investigating their kidnapping.
Berlusconi, who backed the US-led war to oust Saddam Hussein and who has sent some 3,000 Italian troops and police to serve in the US-led coalition in Iraq, described the women's release as a "moment of joy".
"After so many days, so many nights, so many paths trodden and 16 negotiations launched keeping us all in suspense, the story ends," he told an impromptu news conference in Rome shortly after the women's release was announced earlier Tuesday.
Pope John Paul II also expressed his "great joy" at their release, while France's prime minister, Germany's foreign minister and a White House spokesman all welcomed the news of their liberation.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the Torretta family's Rome apartment after the news broke. The crowd cheered as Simona's mother Annamaria and two sisters appeared on the balcony.
"We are already celebrating," Annamaria Torretta said on Italian television.
"I'm so happy, overwhelmingly happy," said Pari's father, Luciano, from his home in Rimini on the Adriatic coast. "This was the news I had been hoping for. And I really believe it's true."
Italian President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said Italy shared the families' joy but tempered his words, recalling the execution of other hostages.
"In this moment of great joy, there is still pain for all those who were killed in a barbaric way. We remain anxious about the other hostages still in the hands of their kidnappers and we renew our appeal: free them."
Italy had been shocked by the murder in August of Italian journalist Enzo Baldoni in Iraq, who was executed by his abductors after Berlusconi refused to bow to demands to pull his troops out of the war-torn country.
An Italian security guard was kidnapped in Iraq and killed in April, also after Rome refused to give in to demands to withdraw its troops.
The kidnapping of the two women put the country back on tenterhooks.
Pictures of the two Simonas were hung on Rome's historic Capitol building, tens of thousands of Italians joined candle-lit vigils and the government sent envoys to the Middle East to try to end the ordeal.
Although the Italian government has declined to confirm it, a Kuwaiti newspaper which had announced at the weekend the women's impending release said a ransom had been paid and the paper's publisher reiterated the statement on Tuesday evening.
"The sum, as we had written, was one million dollars. A well-informed source in Baghdad told us," said Ali al-Roz, publisher of Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai al-Aam.
An interior ministry official, Under-Secretary Alfredo Mantovan, declined to confirm or deny the report. But he added: "We didn't give in to any blackmail."
It was never quite clear which group detained Pari, Torretta and their two Iraqi colleagues. Their abduction was claimed by two organisations, while several statements posted on websites on their fate were dismissed by the Italian authorities.
The extremist group Ansar Al-Zawahiri, which demanded the release of all Muslim women imprisoned in Iraq in exchange for the safe return of the women, claimed in an Internet message last week that they had been murdered.
The two Simonas, both committed pacifists, had been working on humanitarian projects for Iraqi children.
The two Iraqis captured and released with them are male engineer Ali Raad Ali Abdul Aziz, part of the Bridge to Baghdad team, and Mahnaz Assam, who is employed by Italian aid agency Intersos.
Assam said her release was a much more subdued affair than the euphoric welcome the two Simonas received.
"They let me free in a Baghdad street about 7:30 pm. I stopped a taxi and got it to take me home," Mahnaz Assam told Italian television.
Two French journalists, apparently captured by the same group that said it had kidnapped the aid workers, were still being held on Tuesday evening and there was still no news of a British hostage, Kenneth Bigley.
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