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Sierra Leone hostages shifted: Reuters

Twenty-one United Nations peacekeepers held hostage by rebels in the eastern Sierra Leone town of Pendembu have been moved to a Red Cross compound in the town, the United Nations said on Friday.

The peacekeepers in Pendembu, all Indian, have been held hostage since early June.

UN spokesman Manoel de Almeida e Silva offered no details and officials at the International Committee of the Red Cross said they had no information.

But he said an additional 222 Indian peacekeepers and 11 military observers from various nations were still surrounded by Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front in the eastern diamond town of Kailahun.

The group of UN military observers and troops trapped in their camp in Kailahun, mostly Indian, have been surrounded since early May by RUF forces.

The West African nation, a former British colony, has been shaken since 1991 by a civil war. A peace agreement signed a year ago was to have disarmed the rebels but they captured, and later released 500 UN troops as soon as they neared diamond-mining areas the RUF controls.

Almeida e Silva said 35,000 civilians, driven from their homes by the conflict, have gathered at Mile 91, 90 miles outside of Freetown.

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