Four Westerners freed and are back in Thailand

Four Westerners walked back into Thailand Sunday after being held for more than two days by Vietnamese-led troops on the Thai-Cambodian border. Robert Ashe, a Briton, and Pierre Perrin, a Frenchman, working for the International Committee of the Red Cross, were seeking permission to search for wounded from intense border fighting. They were accompanied by two American photographers, George Lienemann and Richard Franken, who were working on a book on Cambodian refugees for the United Nations.

A Thai military spokesman said the four were spotted approaching a bridge that forms the border crossing at the western Cambodian town of Poipet, 20 miles south of an abandoned border food distribution center where they disappeared Thursday. The men were well treated and fed by their captors but had been blindfolded when approaching military installations.