MANILA - A MILITARY official says kidnappers have freed a 5-year-old girl after apparently being pressured by a military offensive in the southern Philippines.
Marine Lt. Col. Leonard Vincent Teodoro says Andrea Diman was abandoned Tuesday in a farming village on Basilan island's Tuburan township near where marines were searching for her and her abductors.
Lt Teodoro says Diman was snatched near her house on Sunday by two gunmen riding a motorcycle in Basilan's Lamitan township. She was shaken but unharmed after being held by up to 10 gunmen in a jungle.
He says the kidnappers are believed to have close links with the Abu Sayyaf, an Al-Qaeda-linked group blamed for many kidnappings in predominantly Muslim Basilan province, about 885 kilometres south of Manila. -- AP
