Gordon Brown approved a mission to rescue the British journalist Stephen Farrell in which a member of the Special Forces was killed this morning, The Times has learnt.Plans for the raid, in which Farrell's Afghan interpreter, a civilian and dozens of Taleban fighters were also killed, were drawn up by British Special Forces commanders in Kabul during a weekend of secret planning.
Lieutenant-General Jim Dutton, a Royal Marine and deputy commander of Nato's International Security Assistance Force, headed the team and Mr Brown, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, and Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, were kept informed of what was being planned.
The Director Special Forces, a major-general who cannot be identified, has a direct phone link to the Prime Minister and would have informed Mr Brown in person of the risks involved. Whitehall sources confirmed that Mr Brown had given his approval for the rescue mission to go ahead.
A spokeswoman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "Ministers were kept informed throughout and supported the operation to secure the release of Mr Farrell."
Farrell, a New York Times journalist, was freed in the pre-dawn operation but his Afghan interpreter, Mohammad Sultan Munadi, was shot dead. A Taleban commander said that 48 of his men were killed in the raid, in which at least one civilian also died.
The pair were taken hostage by the Taleban on Saturday after travelling to the site of an air strike near Kunduz in which up to 125 people were killed.
Moments after this morning's raid Farrell phoned his American colleagues to say that he had been freed. He said: "We were all in a room, the Talebs all ran, it was obviously a raid. We thought they would kill us. We thought should we go out."
The two hostages ran outside. "There were bullets all around us. I could hear British and Afghan voices," he added.
Farrell said that Munadi went forward, shouting: "Journalist! Journalist!" but dropped in a hail of bullets. "I dived in a ditch," he said, adding that he did not know whether the shots had come from allied or militant fire.
After a minute or two, the dual Irish-British national who is a former Middle East correspondent for The Times, said that he heard more British voices and shouted: "British hostage!" The British voices told him to come over. As he did, he saw Munadi's body.
"He was lying in the same position as he fell," Mr Farrell said. "That's all I know. I saw him go down in front of me. He did not move. He's dead. He was so close, he was just two feet in front of me when he dropped."