An NBC news crew including Richard Engel, the network's chief foreign correspondent, was freed on Monday after five days of captivity in Syria by an unknown group, the news organization said in a statement. WSJ's Nour Mala reports. Photo: AP Images.

BEIRUT— Richard Engel, the NBC News foreign correspondent freed with colleagues Monday after five days of captivity in Syria, on Tuesday said he believed his kidnappers were Shiite militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad who planned to exchange the U.S. news team for prisoners held by the rebels.

NBC said on Tuesday that Mr. Engel and his production team returned unharmed to Turkey, from where they had crossed into northwestern Syria on Thursday.

Mr. Engel's revelations came as clashes between Syrian rebels supported by armed Palestinians and a separate Palestinian faction loyal to Mr. Assad raged inside a Damascus refugee camp, a restive antiregime enclave just south of the capital that rebels are trying to control.

The Palestinian National Council, the legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organization, on Tuesday denounced the leader of the pro-Assad Palestinian faction involved in the fighting, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and said it would seek to expel him from the council during its next meeting.

The leader, Ahmad Jibril, was in the Yarmouk camp when the fighting intensified a few days ago but has since fled Syria, the Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported, citing rebel sources.

"Jibril's alliance with Assad has caused divisions within PFLP-GC and the resignation of several central committee members, who have criticized the group's leader for arming Palestinians," the Ma'an report said.

Mr. Engel spoke to NBC's "Today" show, describing how his team was ambushed, saw one rebel escort immediately killed, and moved among several safe houses before being rescued by a rebel brigade five days later.

"They kept us blindfolded, bound," Mr. Engel, unshaven and wearing what he said were the same clothes he first departed to Syria in, told the network. He appeared on television with NBC producer Ghazi Balkis and cameraman John Kooistra, part of the team that disappeared in Syria. Aziz Akyavas, a Turkish reporter working with NBC, was also released, Turkish media reported.

NBC News' chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel Associated Press

Fifteen masked gunmen waiting near a road dragged the NBC team and Syrian rebels—who frequently help journalists traverse the Turkish border into Syria—out of their car and into a container truck on Thursday morning, Mr. Engel said.

The ordeal ended Monday at 11 p.m. local time in a firefight when the captors, taking their captives to a different location, ran into a rebel checkpoint, Mr. Engel said. Two captors were killed and the rest fled, allowing rebels to take the NBC team to safety.

NBC didn't specify the number of people working with its team in Syria that disappeared. The network didn't have any contact with the captors or receive a request for ransom in the five days the crew was missing.

Throughout, the network and other journalists working to identify the captives' location and secure their release had asked news organizations not to report on the incident—a media blackout sometimes requested for security or privacy in kidnap situations.

The incident underscores the perils of reporting in Syria, now one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists. It also shows how many competing groups and interests have emerged in the chaos of a conflict often reported as a strict battle between government and opposition forces.

On Tuesday, Russia's Foreign Ministry said two Russian citizens and an Italian were kidnapped in Syria on Monday evening.

Mr. Engel, the 39-year-old correspondent, said he and his colleagues weren't physically torturedwhile held by the militiamen, but "there was a lot of psychological torture, threats of being killed. They made us choose which one of us would be shot first, and when we refused, there were mock shootings."

Ahrar al-Sham, an Islamist rebel brigade whose fighters manned the rebel checkpoint that ultimately led the team to its release, said on its website that it helped free the journalists from gangs linked to Mr. Assad's regime. The rebel group is powerful in Syria's Idlib province, where the team was kidnapped.

"I think I have a very good idea who they were," Mr. Engel told NBC of his captors. He described them as pro-government Shiite militiamen who were trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and allied with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group—both major allies of the Assad regime throughout its crackdown on rebels.

"They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shiite faith," he said. President Assad and the core of the Syrian military and security apparatus are Alawites, a Shiite-linked sect that is a minority in Syria.

The Assad family has ruled over a Sunni-majority population for more than four decades. Pro-democracy protests against their rule that erupted in March 2011 have turned into a civil war in which regional players are now also deeply involved.

It isn't clear beyond that description how Mr. Engel identified the captors. He said they wanted to exchange his team for four Iranians and two Lebanese from a Shiite political party.

The Committee to Protect Journalists says 28 journalists were killed in combat in Syria, or targeted for murder by government or opposition forces, this year. Several other journalists are believed to be missing inside the country, including Austin Tice, an American freelancer who disappeared near Damascus in August. More than 40,000 Syrians have been killed in the conflict, rights groups said.

Mr. Engel joined NBC News in 2003, after working as a freelancer for ABC News in Iraq. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008 and has since then reported from many hot spots, from the revolution in Egypt to the recent conflict in Libya. He is also author of the book "War Journal: My Five Years in Iraq."

Mr. Engel said he and his colleagues tried to stay positive while in captivity.

"We weren't allowed to speak," he said, "but if you sort of look, kind of peek, underneath the blindfold, you can see maybe if there's a guard in the room or not, and we tried to joke a little bit back and forth and keep our spirits up."

—Christopher S. Stewart in New York contributed to this article.

Write to Nour Malas at