Six-year-old hostage freed after gun battle

The six-year-old girl who spent 23 days as a hostage of Philippine rebels was freed by soldiers after a 15-minute gunfight.

The kidnappers eventually abandoned Eiman April Grant in Tuburan municipality on Basilan Island in the southern Philippines after the battle, Tuburan police chief Abdurahman Hashim said.

There were no casualties. Troops pursued some of the kidnappers, who fled towards a nearby mountain. Other captors escaped by sea in two motorised 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. Her stepfather, Douglas Grant, is British.

The girl, wearing yellow shorts and a white T-shirt with her hair in a ponytail, said she was treated well during her ordeal. She said: "I feel fine but I'm a little tired. I am happy now".

The girl and her mother were later flown on a military transport plane to Manila, where they met British Ambassador Allan Collins at an air force base.

The girl's mother said she and her daughter, who is a Filipino citizen, want to be reunited with her husband in Britain.

Four suspected Abu Sayyaf rebels came to Mina Rasul Grant's home in Lamitan, Basilan, about 550 miles south of Manila, and demanded 100,000 pesos (£1,300) from her on January 10. When she was able to produce only 1,000 pesos (£13), they seized her daughter.

Officials said the rebels then turned over the child to guerrillas belonging to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the larger of the two Muslim rebel groups fighting for an independent Islamic nation in the southern Philippines.