UN peacekeepers released by Syrian rebels

Four Filipino United Nations peacekeepers abducted last week by armed men while patrolling in the demilitarized area between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been released, officials said Sunday.

U.N. officials and the Philippine army both said that the four are in good health.

The rebels from the Yarmouk Martyrs' Brigade had said they were holding the soldiers for their own safety after clashes with Syrian government forces had put them in danger, Reuters reported.

They were seized on Tuesday as they patrolled close to an area where the same rebel group held 21 Filipino observers for three days in March.

A rebel spokesman said the four were handed over on Sunday morning at a border checkpoint called Beit Ara, in an area where the Jordanian and Israeli borders join with the Golan Heights.

"They have been handed over in a spot in the Yarmouk Valley," Abu Iyas al-Horani told Reuters.

Philippine Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario confirmed to Reuters in Manila that the four had been released.

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Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan, a spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, said the four had already been taken back to their battalion in the U.N. peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights.

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The Philippines said it aimed to pull out 342 soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Golan after the abduction.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed them, a move not recognized internationally.

Reuters contributed to this report