on the left this is ghazi balkiz and john klooister, a long-time nbc news photographer. these three men were able to appear live on the "today" show, fife days after being kidnapped and held in captivity in syria. just hours before this shot of them this morning, they were freed by a syrian rebel group who rescued them from an unknown group that had taken them and that had held them for five, long, horrible days. the rebel group not only rescued these three, they then took responsibility for driving them to the border and getting them safely out of syria. they were in syria in the first place to cover the war there. this is footage of richard's last piece for nbc news before the kidnapping happened. richard and his team are veterans in this field. they've been working together for a decade in just about every corner of the world you can imagine, including long stints covering the war in iraq. also the war in afghanistan. when they filed this report last week from aleppo in syria, they reported that conditions were about as bad as you can imagine. bread lines, no medicine

. >> ghazi balkiz and john kooistra. they were freed after five days after being held by an unknown group inside war-torn syria. what richard said about there being other people held who are not freed. he is right. austin tice is an american reporter who has worked for a number of outlets, including mcclatchy service and the "washington post." he has been missing in syria since august. in all there are 15 journalists who have reported to have gone missing in syria while reporting on this conflict. so far of the 15 only eight have been freed. our richard and ghazi and john are three of them. we and they and their families feel very lucky and very happy tonight that that is the case, even as we continue to be concerned about those for whom we cannot yet say that foreign correspondents and crews know exactly how dangerous it can be to report from a war zone. we know in part from their reporting that this particular war zone appears to be descending into just total chaos right now. you can see signs of that in the syrian gov