A NORWEGIAN resort manager, two Canadians and a Filipino woman from a southern Philippine island have been abducted by unidentified gunmen, the military and police have said.
The suspects sailed two motorboats into a marina on the luxury Samal Island and seized the four from aboard yachts just before midnight on Monday, said Superintendent Antonio Rivera, a local police spokesman.
A Japanese couple was also nearly abducted but they fought back before the attackers escaped with their hostages from the island off Davao City, Rivera said. said.
“They appeared to target the foreigners. They went straight for the yachts,” Rivera said.
“(But) we still don’t have anything. We’re blank. No group has taken responsibility and there is no demand for ransom.”
A police report identified the Canadian tourists as John Ridsdel, 68, and Robert Hall, 50. The Norwegian, who was working at the resort marina, was identified as Kjartan Sekkinstad, 56.
The 40-year-old Filipina, identified only as Tess, was a companion of one of the Canadian tourists.
Regional military spokesman Capt. Alberto Caber said the gunmen appeared to have specifically targeted the victims when they entered the luxury Holiday Oceanview Samal Resort on the northern tip of the island, about 975km southeast of Manila.
Law enforcement boats and helicopters were scouring the waters.
Caber said a naval blockade was set up around the island to stop the kidnappers from reaching Basilan Island farther to the southwest where the militants have strongholds where they keep hostages while negotiating ransoms.
A police report identified the Canadian tourists as John Ridsdel, 68, and Robert Hall, 50. The Norwegian, who was working at the resort marina, was identified as Kjartan Sekkinstad, 56.
The 40-year-old Filipina, identified only as Tess, was a companion of one of the Canadian tourists.
Davao del Norte provincial police chief Senior Supt. Samuel Gandingan confirmed on government radio station DXRP in Davao City that three men armed with rifles entered the resort before midnight on Monday.
Caber said authorities have no immediate suspects.
A woman working at the Holiday Ocean View resort, which operates the marina, confirmed the incident but declined to comment further.
The Canadian and Norwegian embassies in Manila declined to comment. A Norwegian foreign ministry spokeswoman in Oslo, Lothe Salvesen, said the government was investigating the reports of the abductions, but could not confirm any details.
Samal Island, a short boat ride from the southern commercial centre of Davao on Mindanao island, is famed for powdery white sand beaches and dive spots, with resorts there charging up to $500 a night.
The area, about 800km southeast of Manila, is a popular stop for foreign tourists who sail around the nation’s many tropical islands.
But the Philippines’ southern region has endured decades of conflict, with Muslim rebels waging a separatist conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
Parts of Mindanao are also home to more extreme Muslim militants, the most infamous of which are the Abu Sayyaf. They engage in frequent kidnappings of locals as well as foreigners in often successful efforts to extort ransoms.
The Abu Sayyaf is a ragtag group of several hundred men founded in the 1990s that has withstood US-backed military operations to extinguish it.
In the most recent kidnapping of foreigners, Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized a German couple in April last year while they were sailing off the far south-western island of Palawan, a popular tourist destination.
The couple was released six months later, with the Abu Sayyaf claiming it had received all of the 250 million pesos (AU$21 million) it demanded in ransom.
The Abu Sayyaf is currently holding nine hostages, including four foreigners, in the jungles of Jolo island in Mindanao’s southwest, a local military spokesman said.
In 2001, Abu Sayyaf militants tried to seize hostages from the Pearl Farm Beach Resort south of Oceanview during a ransom-kidnapping spree in the early 2000s in the southern Philippines.
They seized dozens of Filipino hostages on Basilan and 21 people, mostly European tourists, from the Malaysian resort of Sipadan in 2000, and abducted three Americans and 17 Filipinos in 2001 from the Dos Palmas resort in Palawan province southwest of Manila.
The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen, was recently declared a terrorist group by a Philippine court and is also on Washington’s lists of terror organisations.
The militants are still holding other hostages, including two Malaysians, a Dutch bird watcher kidnapped nearly three years ago, and a town mayor.
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