Rebels in Sierra Leone yesterday released the last of a group of hostages believed to number as many as 37 who were captured on Wednesday, diplomatic sources said in Freetown. They arrived in the capital shortly before the 8 p.m. (9 p.m. Irish time) curfew, the sources said.
In London, the British Foreign Office confirmed that two British soldiers who were among the detainees had been released. The original group of hostages - captured on Wednesday - included five Britons with the UN military observer team in Sierra Leone (UNOMSIL), Nigerian ECOMOG soldiers, UN humanitarian workers and journalists.
The Sierra Leone rebel leader, Mr Johnny Paul Koroma, head of a junta that briefly seizer power in 1997, said earlier from Monrovia he was urgently working on securing the release by last night of all the hostages, believed to number between 30 and 37.
Another 13 hostages - including two out of five British military captives - were freed following the release earlier in the day of six Sierra Leonean drivers, a western source said.
Their captors were supporters of Mr Koroma who feel neglected by a July peace deal in the impoverished former British colony's civil war.
They have demanded food and medicine and had asked to hear Mr Koroma in person on state radio, accusing their Revolutionary United Front (RUF) allies of holding him against his will.
Mr Koroma, speaking from neighbouring Liberia, told BBC radio in a broadcast interview that he had ordered his fighters to free their captives immediately.
"I have ordered them to release them immediately," he said, when contacted by telephone from Freetown.
He added that he was making arrangements for senior commanders of the hostage-takers to travel to Liberia so he could brief them fully on the peace agreement.
Mr Koroma denied that the rebel movement was divided. "We are still united . . . the marriage is still intact," he told the BBC.
Sierra Leone's rebels, who came close to taking Freetown in January, have been blamed for the widespread mutilation of civilians, typically by hacking off hands or arms.
Their leaders had said all along they did not plan to harm the hostages and would release them eventually.
The UN had kept in contact with the captors by radio.
A UN spokeswoman said a senior member of the rebel movement, Lieut-ColIdriss Kamara, who represents Mr Koroma's Armed Forces Revolutionary Council wing of the alliance, had gone to talk with the hostage-takers on Friday.
Togo's Foreign Minister, Mr Joseph Kokou Koffigoh, and representatives of six other West African countries monitoring the peace deal met in Freetown on Saturday to urge the immediate release of the hostages without conditions.
The President, Mr Ahmad Te jan Kabbah, who won multi-party elections in 1996, and the RUF leader, Mr Foday Sankoh, who took up arms in 1991, signed the peace deal, their second, in Togo on July 7th.
The first peace deal, agreed after Mr Kabbah's election, unravelled and disgruntled soldiers ousted him in May 1997.
The latest deal grants government posts to the RUF and to Koroma loyalists, its allies since the 1997 coup. A West African force ousted the Koroma junta in early 1998.