Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and his crew had sneaked into Syria before. They knew where to go, where not to go; what to say, what not to say. But last Thursday, in a demonstration of the perils of reporting from the war-torn country, Mr. Engel’s crew was taken hostage by an unknown group and told they would be used to secure the release of hostages being held by Syrian rebels.

On Monday night, the men were freed when the hostage-takers were stopped at a rebel checkpoint. The crew’s return to Turkey on Tuesday highlighted once more the unpredictable nature of covering the conflict in Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be the world’s most dangerous place for the news media.

The journalists were physically unharmed. NBC, which sought to kept the crew’s disappearance a secret until they were freed, released a statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”

Mr. Engel said Tuesday on NBC’s “Today” show that the captors talked “openly about their loyalty to the government” of President Bashar al-Assad.