Two Spanish journalists taken hostage in Syria by an Al Qaeda-linked group were freed after six months in captivity and were heading back to Spain on Sunday, one of their employers said.

El Mundo correspondent Javier Espinosa, 49, and freelance photographer Ricardo Garcia Vilanova, 42, were "freed and handed over to the Turkish military," the Spanish newspaper said on its website.

Espinosa called El Mundo's offices on Saturday evening and said they were in good health, it added. The paper said the two journalists would fly back to Madrid on Sunday, without specifying the time.

"Pure happiness," wrote Espinosa's girlfriend, the journalist Monica Garcia Prieto, on Twitter early Sunday, without giving further details.

"It has been a hard few months. We knew the wait would be long but you never get used to it," said the director of El Mundo's international pages, Ana Alonso Montes.

"You never know when the moment of liberation will come, although we never doubted it would," she told national radio.

Espinosa and Vilanova were seized on September 16 at Syria's border with Turkey, the latest of scores of journalists captured while covering Syria's civil war.

There was no immediate word on Sunday on whether any demands were made by their kidnappers or any ransom paid.

El Mundo identified the captors as members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant,  with roots in Al Qaeda's Iraqi affiliate.

AFP