UN concerned about soldiers

The United Nations mission in Sierra Leone has said it is concerned about a group of twenty-one Indian peacekeepers held by rebels in the east of the country.

A UN spokesman in Freetown, David Wimhurst, said that indications given by the Revolutionary United Front that the group would be released have not been fulfilled.

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

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