21st Child Is Released From Cult Compound : Standoff: Children are together in a house in Waco. Social workers say they are in good shape. FBI official says mass suicide plan is denied.

Another child was released Friday from an isolated cult compound near here, and officials said that the growing number of youngsters sent out from the Branch Davidian complex appear to be in excellent condition.

Texas Children’s Protective Services officials said the 21 children released so far, who are being kept in a large house in Waco, are well-mannered and adjusted and do not appear to have been traumatized by their experiences with David Koresh’s religious sect or a deadly gun battle last Sunday on the sect’s grounds. Their ages range from 5 months to 12 years.

“The children are in remarkably good psychological condition,” said Joyce Sparks, an investigations supervisor for the agency, a division of the Texas Department of Human Services. “They seem to be very smart and well-educated.”

Added Leticia Vasquez, who is monitoring the situation for the governor’s office in Austin: “These are very cool kids. They are not crying a lot. They are not kicking and screaming a lot. They are very well-behaved.”

Originally, officials of Children’s Protective Services said some of the children were being sent to foster homes. But Koresh apparently wanted them kept together. His concern about their condition prompted officials on Friday to send a videotape and photographs of the children into the compound and to stress at the news conference that they were being held in a “family setting” at an undisclosed location.

In other developments Friday, Bob A. Ricks, an FBI supervisor from Oklahoma City who is helping to oversee negotiations with Koresh, said Koresh has denied any plans for a mass suicide in the complex.

The State Department reportedly had relayed information from Australians connected with the sect that said Koresh was contemplating a mass suicide in the compound, according to a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Federal officials have not revealed officially why they decided to stage a high-risk assault Sunday rather than surround the compound and demand access to search for illegal weapons. But the Associated Press quoted one ATF official anonymously Friday as saying, “We did not believe we could besiege these people without the very real possibility of a mass suicide.”

Ricks said Friday that agents have delivered medical supplies to the compound to treat Koresh’s wrist, which was injured during the shootout Sunday morning between members of the Mt. Carmel sect and ATF agents.

Ricks did say that Koresh “believes it is imperative for him to have that injury sewn up. And he also has indicated there has been a change of color to that injury.”

Earlier in the week, Koresh claimed he was shot in the “guts,” but federal officials later said he had a “miraculous” recovery.

Ricks said negotiations with Koresh, the 33-year-old self-anointed leader of the group, are continuing. “He is lucid,” Ricks said, but then he added that Koresh often veers off into long diatribes about God and religion.

The FBI official also said that Koresh is growing upset with media reports quoting former cult members who recall that he proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ.

“He is telling us now that it would be more accurate to say he is a prophet rather than Jesus,” Ricks said.

The standoff here in Central Texas has spanned six days, after the initial gunfight that left four ATF agents dead and 15 wounded. In addition, the body of a male believed to be a cult member has been recovered from the rear of the compound.

Funerals for two of the slain agents, Steven Willis and Todd McKeehan, were held Friday in Houston and in Elizabethton, Tenn. Funerals for agents Conway LeBleu and Robert Williams were held earlier in Louisiana and Mississippi.

The child released Friday morning was identified as 9-year-old Heather Jones, the sister of Kevin and Anthony Jones, who were taken out over the last several days.

Officials said there now are 17 children still inside, along with 47 women and 43 men.

With negotiations continuing over the release of about one child a day, federal officials declined to discuss what steps they will take once the compound is occupied solely by adults. Ricks would only say Friday that “we have no intention of setting any deadline for the adults.”