Eight Venezuelan soldiers seized by an armed group near the Colombian border have been rescued, Venezuela’s Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino says. Gen Padrino did not give any details about the mission in which the eight were freed, or of the captors who had taken them. A group of Colombian rebels had said it was behind the abduction of the soldiers. There have been skirmishes between the Venezuelan army and former rebels. A group calling itself 10th Front Martín Villa said in a letter it sent to the Red Cross in May that it had seized the soldiers during clashes on 23 April in the Venezuelan state of Apure, which borders Colombia.(BBC)…[+]