The Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena has been freed after being held hostage in Iraq for the past month.

But Ms Sgrena was wounded when US troops opened fire on a convoy carrying her to safety, and an Italian negotiator who help negotiate her release was killed, her newspaper Il Manifesto said.

Ms Sgrena was taken to a US-run hospital for treatment for wounds to her shoulder, while the negotiator, an Italian secret service agent, was shot dead in the incident.

The news took the edge off the scenes of celebrations surrounding Ms Sgrena's release.

Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the Italian President, confirmed the good news, saying he had been told by Gianni Letta, the minister responsible for the Italian secret service.

Staff at her newspaper, the communist daily Il Manifesto, erupted into "applause, joy and tears," at the news, a journalist at the newspaper told AFP.

"It’s an exceptional day," said her father Franco Sgrena, who was reported by the ANSA news agency to be receiving treatment from a doctor because he was overcome with emotion.

Vatican sources said Pope John Paul II, who had addressed an appeal to her kidnappers to release her and all other hostages held in Iraq,"expressed his satisfaction," at the news.

Ms Sgrena, a 56-year-old veteran Middle East correspondent for Il Manifesto, a left wing daily paper which opposed the Iraq war, was abducted on February 4 after visiting a Baghdad mosque where refugees have been encamped since the US-led assault on the city of Fallujah in November.

She was shown pleading for her life in a video released by her kidnappers two weeks after her kidnapping in Baghdad. Sobbing and looking thinner, she delivered an impassioned message first in Italian, then in French to plead for her life, to beg Rome to withdraw its troops from Iraq and to warn all foreigners, including journalists, to stay away from Iraq.

The centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi rejected the plea, and within days used its majority to ensure the Italian Senate voted to extend the mission of Rome’s 3,000 troops in Iraq.

A few days after the video was shown, an estimated half a million people marched in Rome to demand her release.

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