Tripoli , Libya ( CNN ) -- The Moammar Gadhafi loyalists who had been holding journalists in Tripoli 's Rixos Hotel for five days `` essentially just capitulated '' upon realizing that most of the rest of the city had fallen to rebels , CNN 's Matthew Chance said after his release Wednesday . Their release ended what some were beginning to fear was a hostage situation for the three dozen journalists who had been kept inside the blacked-out hotel as fighters loyal to the National Transitional Council fought their way into the Libyan capital . Chance , a senior international correspondent for CNN , said `` the reality slowly dawned '' on their guards that Gadhafi 's government was collapsing . `` They really believed that Gadhafi was coming back , that he was beating the rebels , '' Chance said after his release . `` That 's what the government line has been on this all along . '' But as the rebels advanced through the city and overran Gadhafi 's Bab al-Aziziya compound on Tuesday , `` It became more and more obvious that there was nothing really outside of the hotel that was in Gadhafi 's control . '' Wednesday , the guards handed over their weapons and told the journalists , `` We 're going to let you go , '' Chance said . The release was coordinated through the International Committee of the Red Cross , which , along with the BBC , provided cars to drive them out . CNN producer Jomana Karadsheh said the men who held them `` really did not know what the scenes on the streets of Tripoli were like . '' Shortly before the guards gave up , she said , one guard asked a companion , `` You were out there -- tell me , what 's really going on ? Is it what they are telling us ? '' Chance called the experience a `` nightmare , '' saying the journalists wept with relief after their release . The `` die-hard Gadhafi loyalists '' who held them thought they were NATO spies , he said . On Tuesday , one shouted `` I suppose you 're happy now that they 're killing Libyans , '' he said . The reporters had been bandying about `` all kinds of paranoid scenarios '' about what would be done to them , like being used as human shields or executed `` by some lunatic hard-liner , '' Chance said . But in the end , all were released unharmed . `` Everybody 's been hugging each other , '' Chance said . `` People who have been living cheek-to-jowl for the past five days , sleeping in the corridors , wondering whether we were going to make it -- it 's all very emotional , '' he said . iReport : Are you in Libya ? Share photos . Chance had described on Twitter the process of going free , piling into a car with other journalists , and driving away from the hotel that had become a virtual prison . `` I can see the NTC rebels . We are nearly there ! '' he wrote , followed a moment later by : `` Rixos crisis ends . All journalists are out ! ''
NEW : Guards `` really believed Moammar Gadhafi was coming back , '' Chance says . The Rixos Hotel was one of the last pockets of Gadhafi control in Tripoli . The experience was a `` nightmare '' for about 35 journalists trapped there . The International Committee of the Red Cross sent cars to take the reporters out .