Kidnapped Italian priest freed in the Philippines

ROME (AFP) - Giancarlo Bossi, the Italian priest abducted last month in the Philippines, has been released, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said yesterday.

"Father Giancarlo Bossi has been freed, a car is bringing him to a Philippines police station," Italy's ANSA news agency reported Prodi as saying.

Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the news with "great joy" said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi.

Bossi, 57, is a member of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions (PIME). He was seized on June 10 in Zamboanga Sibugay, in the southeast Philippines.

Military officers in the region originally blamed the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Marines searching for Bossi on MILF-held territory on Basilan island were ambushed by the group last week and 14 of them were killed in the ensuing firefight.

A close adviser to President Gloria Arroyo suggested that Abu Sayyaf, an Islamic extremist group known to have ties with Al-Qaeda, might be responsible.