A German woman abducted by gunmen in Afghanistan has been freed, the German foreign ministry has confirmed.
Hours earlier, Christina Barbara Meier, an aid worker, had appeared in a video asking Berlin to use every effort to gain her freedom.
She had been seized from a Kabul restaurant while having lunch with her husband on Saturday. Her kidnapping was the first of a Westerner in the Afghan capital for more than two years.
In the video, Ms Meier had said: "I am fine . . . I ask my country to urgently help and cooperate for my release."
A bespectacled young man who had covered his face appeared on the video to say the abductors were not Taliban, adding they belonged to a "special network".
He demanded the release of the group's men held by President Hamid Karzai's government.
The Afghan Interior Ministry said the abductors were not Taliban guerrillas who have seized more than 30 people, many of them foreigners, in several parts of the country in recent weeks.