A Filipino nurse held hostage with the couple was shot and may have been killed in the rescue operation, said Philippine Gen. Narciso Abaya.

Martin Burnham, kidnapped more than a year ago along with his wife Gracia by the Abu Sayyaf extremist group, was killed by a gunshot during the raid, said Abaya, the Philippine deputy military chief of staff.

Burnham's wife was being operated on in a military hospital in the southern city of Zamboanga, said Maj. Gen. Ernesto Carolina, commander of Philippine forces in the south. "It's a gunshot wound. She's talking. She's out of danger," he said.

Abaya said four of the kidnappers were killed and several soldiers were wounded.

Mrs. Burnham was conscious and talking to U.S. military doctors at the Philippine Southern Command Hospital. Doctors said a bullet passed cleanly through her right thigh.

Philippine officers said hundreds of elite troops equipped with night vision goggles and backed by U.S. surveillance technology launched the attack to free the Wichita, Kan., missionaries today as part of an extended rescue operation that has been going on for almost two weeks.

The Philippine military said intelligence showed that members of the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim rebel group infamous for beheading hostages, were holed up with at least one of the Burnhams in the fishing village in the southern province of Zamboanga del Norte.

The Light Reaction Company, a stealthy U.S.-trained unit equipped with silencers, night vision equipment and high-tech headsets, fanned out secretly throughout the area of coconut groves and farms in recent days.