The mainly foreign hostages held by Filipino Islamic rebels appear to be unharmed and together, contrary to reports that said they had been separated into small groups, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said yesterday.
"The hostages appear not to have been separated but to be together, and none of them appears to have been wounded," the spokesman told a news briefing on the basis of information reaching the ministry.
He added that reports were "confused, sketchy and sometimes contradictory".
Some Philippine officials said on Thursday that the rebels had separated their captives into small groups to try to escape from troops surrounding their jungle hideout. France has sent a senior envoy to Manila to urge Phillipine authorities to refrain from any action that could endanger the lives of the hostages.
Two French, two Finnish and three German citizens are among the 21 hostages seized by guerrillas on April 23rd at a Malaysian resort and taken to the southern Philippines. The others are 10 Malaysians, two South Africans, a Lebanese and a Filipina.
The spokesman said EU foreign ministers would discuss the crisis during an informal weekend meeting in the Azores.
Meanwhile, a South African government official said yesterday that the rebels had said they would not harm their captives.
Yesterday, a man identifying himself in an interview on a local radio station as one of the gunmen repeated a threat to kill two of the captives if the military did not stop attacking the guerrilla group.