Philippine president told to expect 21 troops from his country held in Golan Heights to be released within 24 hours

Several UN peacekeepers from the Philippines who were abducted by Syrian rebels said in videos posted online on Thursday that they were safe and sound, even as activists reported clashes and shelling in the area where UN troops were being held.

Opposition fighters detained 21 Filipino peacekeepers near the village of Jamlah in the Golan Heights on Wednesday. The abduction marked the first time since UN troops began patrolling an Israeli-Syrian armistice line in the Golan Heights nearly 40 years ago that they had encountered trouble, said Timor Goksel, a Beirut-based former UN official in the region.

One of the videos posted online shows three men dressed in camouflage and blue bulletproof vests marked "UN" and "Philippines".

"We, the UN personnel here, are safe, and the Free Syrian Army are treating us good," one of them says in English. "We cannot go home because the government of Assad do not stop the bombing. To our family, we hope to see you soon and we are OK here."

The second video shows six peacekeepers sitting in a room. An officer, who identifies himself as a captain, says that as their convoy came under shelling on Wednesday, "we stopped and civilian people helped us for our safety and distributed us in different places to keep us safe".

A spokesman for the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigades, who are holding the peacekeepers, told Associated Press via Skype that all the 21 peacekeepers were 'fine and in good health".

"We consider them guests," he added.

The targeting of the peacekeepers was likely to heighten Israeli jitters about the Syrian civil war upsetting the delicate balance along the frontier between the two countries. Israel captured Syria's Golan Heights in the 1967 war, and a UN monitoring force, UNDOF, was sent in 1974, a year after another war between the two countries, to enforce an armistice deal.

The rebel spokesman, who declined to give his name for security reasons, said the peacekeepers' job was to ensure that no heavy weapons, such as tanks, enter the area near the Israeli-Syrian armistice line. For months, the regime had been bringing tanks into the area to fight rebels, he said, adding that helicopter gunships joined the battle late last week.

Asked if the rebels would be ready to hand over the peacekeepers to an international organisation, he said "the command will have to decide about that". He added that once these peacekeepers left the area the regime could kill "as many as 1,000 people".

He said at least 10 people had been killed and dozens wounded in the shelling of Jamlah and nearby villages.

On Thursday, Syrian troops battled rebel fighters near the Golan Heights, in the southern Syrian province of Daraa, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group. He said the fighting was concentrated on the outskirts of Jamlah, about a mile from Israeli-controlled territory.

In an amateur video posted online on Wednesday, a man identified as a spokesman for the Martyrs of Yarmouk Brigades said his group would hold the peacekeepers until Assad's forces withdrew from Jamlah.

The Yarmouk Brigades said in a statement on their Facebook page on Thursday that Assad's troops were shelling the village, and warned that the army would be responsible if any harm came to the peacekeepers in rebel custody.

In Manila, the Philippine government said on Thursday that the peacekeepers were unharmed and were being treated well. Foreign affairs department spokesman Raul Hernandez said the UN force commander in the area was negotiating with the leader of the rebel group.

The Philippine president, Benigno Aquino III, said the commander told him to expect the peacekeepers to be released within 24 hours, with negotiations progressing well.

The UN security council has demanded the peacekeepers' immediate and unconditional release.

The Observatory said negotiations were under way between the rebels and Arab League and UN officials on handing over the peacekeepers, and that the talks were now focused on what road should be used to deliver the troops. It said the rebels wanted the regime to pull its vehicles out of the area, permanently stop shelling there and allow refugees to return.

It was not immediately clear whether UNDOF would keep operating in Syria even if the incident were resolved peacefully. A man who answered the phone at UNDOF's office in Damascus said he was not authorised to give statements, referring questions to the UN in New York.

Goksel, the former UN official who now works for al-Monitor news website, described the members of the peacekeeping force as "a soft target". He said the group was based in Damascus, but that it staffed observation posts along the armistice line, and travelled between the Syrian capital and the frontier to deliver supplies and rotate monitors.

"They were never challenged by anybody in Syria until now," Goksel said.

The Yarmouk Brigades, one of scores of groups fighting Assad's troops, were formed a year ago and most of their fighters appear to be young Syrians from poor areas in the south, said Abdul-Rahman.

In a statement on Thursday, the western-backed opposition group the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) said its representatives were in contact with rebels in the Jamlah area "to let the peacekeepers go". The statement denied that seizing the peacekeepers amounted to kidnapping, saying the peacekeepers were taken in a "preventive security measure".

Rebel groups tend to operate independently, despite attempts in December to form a unified military command, and it was not clear whether the local rebels near the Golan would heed calls from exiled leaders. Rebel fighters tend to see the opposition figures in exile as out of touch.

The SNC also said on Thursday that its leaders would meet in Istanbul next week to elect a prime minister who would head an interim government. The coalition's Turkey-based media office said the interim government would at some point move to rebel-held areas of Syria to operate from there, but that the timetable was not yet set.

The coalition has said in the past that it would set up a Syria-based interim government, but has repeatedly failed to follow through. It was not clear whether the two-day gathering in Istanbul, starting Tuesday, would yield results.