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Soldiers free 6-year-old girl
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THE six-year-old stepdaughter of a British man who was kidnapped three weeks ago was rescued after soldiers surrounded the village where she was being held, a military spokesman said on Saturday.
The kidnappers engaged soldiers and policemen in a 15-minute gunfight before they abandoned April Grant in Tuburan municipality on Basilan island in the southern Philippines around midnight on Friday, according to Tuburan police chief Abdurahman Hashim.
There were no casualties on either side. Troops pursued some of the kidnappers who fled toward a nearby mountain. Other captors escaped by sea on two motorized outriggers, Hashim said.
The girl was flown to a military camp in Zamboanga City, where she was reunited with her Filipino mother, Mina Rasul Grant.
Dr Joselito Castro, who examined the girl, said she was ''fine except for mosquito bites''.
Four suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels on January 10 came to Mina Rasul Grant's home in Lamitan, Basilan, about 880km south of Manila, and demanded 100,000 pesos (US$2,076) from her.
When the mother was able to produce only 1,000 pesos, they seized her daughter.
Officials said the Abu Sayyaf rebels then turned over the child to guerillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of two Muslim rebel groups fighting for an independent Islamic nation in the southern Philippines.
Douglas Grant, the girl's stepfather who was in Scotland when the kidnapping occurred, offered to trade places with his stepdaughter. He went to the area to negotiate but later left after being advised his safety was at risk.
The Abu Sayyaf carried out a series of kidnappings of scores of foreigners and Asians last year. All but two - an American and a Filipino - have been freed, reportedly for huge ransoms.
The military began massive assaults against the rebels in September on Jolo island, south of Basilan, to rescue the remaining hostages and neutralize the guerilla group.
(SD-Agencies)
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