Foreigners abducted from Philippine resort

Foreigners abducted from Philippine resort
By Hannah Edensor


Unidentified gunmen have abducted a Norwegian resort manager, two Canadians and a Filipino woman from a southern Philippine island, the military and police say.

According to the ABC, the four were taken at gunpoint during a raid late on Monday night on the Oceanview resort on Samal island, near Davao City, the largest city on Mindanao island.

Two Japanese resort guests unsuccessfully tried to intervene before the gunmen escaped with their hostages aboard a motorised outrigger from Samal Island off Davao City said regional military spokesman Captain Alberto Caber.

Police identified the Norwegian as Kjartan Sekkingstad, the resort’s marina manager, and Canadians as John Ridsel and Robert Hall. The Filipino woman is the wife of one of the Canadians.

“They appeared to target the foreigners. They went straight for the yachts,” local police spokesman superintendent Antonio Rivera said.

Law enforcement boats and helicopters allegedly scoured the waters around the island on Tuesday to try to stop the kidnappers from escaping, according to Rivera, but they appeared to have fled the region.

The abductions add to a string of kidnappings of foreigners in the south since the early 1990s, the ABC reported, most often by Islamic militants seeking to extort ransoms, however the latest culprits were not identified as being from this group.

Police said a private security guard had recovered a note on the gate of the resort that read, “Justice for our commander, by NPA” five hours after the abduction, the first sign that Maoist guerrillas might be behind the attack.

But security and local government officials doubted whether the New People’s Army rebels would have been capable of carrying out this kind of attack.

“We are still validating that information,” provincial police chief Samuel Gadingan said, per the ABC.

Regional military spokesman Caber said the gunmen appeared to have specifically targeted the victims when they entered the Holiday Oceanview Samal Resort before midnight on Monday on the northern tip of the island, about 975 kilometres southeast of Manila.

He said authorities have no immediate suspects. 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.

Caber said a naval blockade was set up around the island to stop the kidnappers from reaching Basilan Island farther to the southwest where Abu Sayyaf militants have strongholds where they keep hostages while negotiating ransoms.

The Abu Sayyaf, which has about 400 gunmen, was recently declared a terrorist group by a Philippine court and is on Washington’s lists of terror organisations.

Image: Manuel Cayon/AP

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