Captive Journalists Walk Free From Tripoli Hotel

Tripoli, Libya (CNN) -- The Moammar Gadhafi loyalists who had been holding journalists in Tripoli's Rixos Hotel for five days "essentially just capitulated" upon realizing that most of the rest of the city had fallen to rebels, CNN's Matthew Chance said after his release Wednesday.

Their release ended what some were beginning to fear was a hostage situation for the three dozen journalists who had been kept inside the blacked-out hotel as fighters loyal to the National Transitional Council fought their way into the Libyan capital. Chance, a senior international correspondent for CNN, said "the reality slowly dawned" on their guards that Gadhafi's government was collapsing.

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