kidnapped American teenager has escaped from militants suspected of having al-Qaeda links.

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A kidnapped American teenager has escaped after five months' captivity, walking for two days without shoes. Kevin Lunsmann, 14, had been held captive in the Philippines' Basilan province by militants suspected of having al-Qaeda links.

 The American teenager made his dash for freedom after telling his four armed captors on Friday that he was going to take a bath in a stream, police Senior Superintendent Edwin de Ocampo said. The teenager then followed a river down a mountain until villagers found him late the next day, Mr de Ocampo said. The exhausted and hungry boy had initially fled from the villagers, Mr de Ocampo said. "He was in fear, so there was a bit of a chase before the villagers convinced him that they were friends," Mr de Ocampo told The Associated Press.

 He said Kevin was fine, but had bruises on his arms and feet. Initial reports had said the boy was freed by his captors. Zamboanga City Mayor Celso Lobregat said the teenager has been flown to Manila and turned over to US officials there. US Ambassador Harry Thomas said the boy would be reunited with his family soon. "In this holiday season nothing makes me happier than knowing that an innocent victim is returned to his family in time for holiday celebrations," Thomas said in a statement. "I also want to acknowledge the courage of Kevin himself, and his family, throughout this long ordeal.

" Mr Thomas said there would be a "speedy investigation and prosecution of all those involved in the kidnapping of American citizens". Mayor Lobregat said the boy has talked by phone with his Filipino-American mother, Gerfa Yeatts Lunsmann, who was in the United States. He, his mother and a Filipino cousin had been holidaying with relatives on an island near Zamboanga City when they were snatched July 12 and taken by boat to nearby Basilan. The captors then called the family in Campbell County, Virginia, to demand a ransom, officials said.

 The mother was freed two months ago when she was dropped off by boat at a wharf on Basilan. The boy's Filipino cousin escaped last month when Filipino army forces managed to get near an Abu Sayyaf camp in the mountains of Basilan, about 880 kilometers south of Manila. Mayor Lobregat said he was unaware if any ransom had changed hands. Ransom kidnappings have long been a problem in the impoverished region and are blamed mostly on the Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaida-linked group on a US list of terrorist organisations, and its allied armed groups. The militants are notorious for kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.

 Australian Warren Richard Rodwell, 53, was recently abducted from his seaside house in Zamboanga Sibugay province, near Basilan, by suspected militants. The Abu Sayyaf, which has fewer than 400 armed fighters, was founded on Basilan in the 1990s as an offshoot of a violent Muslim insurgency that has been raging for decades. Hundreds of US troops have been stationed in the southern Philippines, including Basilan, to train and equip Philippine forces but are barred from local combat. In addition to Mr Rodwell, the Abu Sayyaf are believed to be holding an Indian, a Malaysian and a Japanese in their jungle strongholds on Jolo island, near Basilan. Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world/us-teen-escapes-philippine-captors/story-e6frfkyi-1226219486127#ixzz1gL01iiDB