UN hopes for release of peacekeepers

The United Nations says it's hopeful that a group of twenty-one Indian peacekeepers held by rebels in eastern Sierra Leone may soon be released.

They would be the last of around five-hundred UN soldiers to be freed.

The group, which had been surrounded by the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front for a month, was seized on Monday and taken away.

A UN spokesman said they were moved to a village near the Liberian border, on a route taken by other abducted UN troops before being released through the offices of the Liberian president, Charles Taylor. However, a further group of more than two-hundred UN soldiers have been pinned down by rebels in another part of eastern Sierra Leone since early May.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service