HOSTAGES FROM YEMEN AT GATWICK AIRPORT, 1999-01-01 (photo)

Former hostage Brian Smith holds the hand of his girlfriend Val Jarvis at a news conference at Gatwick airport January 1, after arriving back from Yemen. The survivors of a hostage gun battle in Yemen said on Friday they were amazed to be alive after being used as human shields but denied they had been pressured by Yemeni authorities to shift blame for the massacre. The hostages, looking drawn, effusively praised each other's courage and calm in the hail of bullets. Smith, said: "Like the rest of my companions, I expected to die in the conflict." Giving graphic and vivid accounts of their terrifying ordeal, the hostages said they could not tell who had opened fire first - the kidnappers or Yemeni troops. "None of us had any idea who fired first," Smith said. "We simply do not know. KD/JDP