DHAKA: Pro-Russian Ukrainian rebels holding captive an international team of military observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (Osce) said on Sunday they are ‘prisoners of war’ and brought them before the media in a news conference.

The group of eight men, all Europeans, were part of a 12-member Osce military verification team deployed in east Ukraine. The other four members are Ukrainian military officers who were not brought before the press.

Speaking through one of their number, a German officer, the Europeans asserted their diplomatic status to the scores of local and foreign journalists assembled in the town of Slavyansk.

With armed rebels watching over them as they spoke, the group said they were in good health.

They said they had been ‘captured’ by the insurgents on Friday, around 4km outside Slavyansk as they had been about to return to the regional hub city of Donetsk.

‘We are Osce officers with diplomatic status,’ their German spokesman said.

‘I cannot go home of my free will,’ he added, reports The Straits Times.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it had sent a negotiating team to Slavyansk to try to arrange the entire team’s release.

Earlier, the local rebel leader in the town, Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, said the Osce observers were considered ‘prisoners of war’.

‘In our town, where a war situation is going on, any military personnel who don't have our permission are considered prisoners of war.’

He added that the group’s driver, who had been seized with them on Friday, had been released.

BDST: 2007 HRS, APR 27, 2014