Fox said correspondent Steve Centanni, a 60-year-old American, and New Zealand-born cameraman Olaf Wiig, 36, were in a hotel in the Palestinian coastal strip. They hugged colleagues inside the hotel lobby before running up the stairs to a higher floor, Fox News footage showed.

“Our heroes are home,” Fox anchorman Shepard Smith said in a live broadcast from New York.

The two reporters were seized on August 14 by a previously unknown group called the Holy Jihad Brigades.

In a videotape released earlier, Centanni and Wiig were shown separately sitting cross-legged, reading statements announcing that they had converted to Islam. At times in the video they were wearing long Muslim robes.

“I changed my name to Khaled. I have embraced Islam and say the word Allah,” Centanni said.