Italian hostage in Philippines freed after 6 months

MANILA (Reuters) - An Italian Red Cross official held hostage by Muslim rebels in the Philippines for nearly six months was freed Sunday, senior officials said.

Eugenio Vagni, 61, was brought to an army base on the southern island of Jolo by a local politician who had been mediating with the kidnappers, rebels from the Abu Sayyaf group, said Senator Richard Gordon, the head of the Philippine Red Cross.

"He is very weak," Gordon told Reuters, adding that no ransom had been paid for the release of the sanitation engineer.

"I am elated. Finally, his ordeal is over," he said.

Local news Web sites said Vagni was freed after the military agreed to release two wives and children of a senior Abu Sayyaf leader who was reportedly holding Vagni in the rugged interior of Jolo. The women and children were arrested Tuesday, the news reports said.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Vagni had been released by his captors peacefully.

"There was no blitz, no violent action that could have put the hostage's life at risk," Frattini said.

"It ended in the best way," he said in an interview with Italian state television.

Gordon said Vagni was undergoing a medical checkup at the trauma ward of a military hospital on Jolo.

Vagni and two other officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross were taken hostage on Jan 15 when they were inspecting a sanitation project at a prison on Jolo. The others, Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba and Swiss national Andreas Notter, were freed in April.

(Reporting by Manny Mogato in Manilla and Silvia Aloisi in Rome; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Jon Boyle)