Three Red Cross workers, including an Italian and a Swiss national, were kidnapped in the southern Philippines on Thursday by militants suspected of belonging to the notorious Abu Sayyaf group, officials said. Senator Richard Gordon, the head of the Philippine National Red Cross, told Reuters the three, who also included a Filipina, were travelling in a Red Cross vehicle on the island of Jolo when they were seized by armed men.
Three Filipinos in the vehicle were robbed but allowed to go free. The International Committee of the Red Cross called for the "swift and safe release" of its staff, whom it said were abducted by armed men on motorcycles just a few hundred yards from a prison that they had visited for a water and sanitation project.
The ICRC was in touch with all parties, including the government, "in order to obtain first of all a sign of life and then to obtain the safe release of our colleagues", he said. It identified the three as Andreas Notter, a 38-year-old Swiss in charge of its office in Zamboanga; Eugenio Vagni, a 62-year-old Italian water and sanitation engineer and Mary Jean Lacaba, a 37-year-old field officer from the Philippines.