A Beirut-based Danish journalist has been freed after being abducted in Lebanon and held hostage for almost one month, his former employer, Danish broadcaster DR, said on Friday.

"Jeppe Nybroe was abducted just under a month ago, while he was in the Beqaa Valley in eastern Lebanon, near the Syrian border," DR said on its website.

Nybroe was kidnapped by "criminal gangs" after renting a car in Beirut and driving towards the Beqaa valley, near the Syrian border, together with a Lebanese journalist, Danish media reported.

"We still don't know exactly where they were taken from, the border area around Arsal is unclear," Ayman Mhanna of the Samir Kassir Eyes Centre, a local press freedom group, told AFP.

The group said it had been in touch with the men during the kidnapping. [Link]