Wednesday 29 June 2005 21:00 BST. BBC One

Two hundred and seventy three people from 37 countries have been taken hostage in Iraq in a new kind of warfare which exploits television and the internet. We know their faces from the "proof of life" videos created by their captors and used to devastating effect against western governments. But what is it like to be taken hostage?

Panorama talks to the hostages who came home; the Italian who witnessed her rescuer die in her arms, the American who escaped and the French journalists who faced death and survived. And we talk to the families who lived through the crisis only to see their loved ones brutally murdered.