Manila: Local government officials yesterday formed ad hoc committees to help the police and military in tracing two European environmentalists who were kidnapped while documenting rare bird species in the southern Philippines on Wednesday, sources said. Officials are clueless on the whereabouts of the kidnappers and their victims.
The crisis management committee has assigned groups to identify the kidnappers and the whereabouts of Dutch national Ewold Horn, 52, and Swiss national Lorenzo Vinciguerra, 47, Governor Sadikul Sahali said in a radio interview
Hundreds of personnel from the police, navy and army were roped in to search for the victims, Sahali said. The governor also went to Luuk-Luuk, Parangan village, Panglima Sugala town in Tawi-Tawi province where Horn, Vinciguerra and a Filipino birdwatcher Ivan Sarenas were kidnapped.
Sarenas, from Davao City in the south, who accompanied the two foreigners told the police that he managed to swim underwater when the kidnappers pushed the victims into a waiting motorboat. The birdwatchers were in Tawi-Tawi a week before they were abducted, Sarenas added.
He also described the faces of the five kidnappers and helped police artists in drawing their sketches, another source said.
At the same time, the police found one policeman and a village councillor who escorted Horn, Vinciguerra and Sarenas to Tawi-Tawi's jungle, the director of police, Senior Superintendent Rodelio Jocson, said in a radio interview.
Important clues
They gave important clues, Jocson said, adding the two claimed they were powerless and could not prevent the five heavily-armed kidnappers from taking the bird watchers as hostages.
So far the families of Horn and Vinciguerra have not been contacted either by the hostages or the kidnappers, official of Manila's foreign affairs department told Gulf News.
A special committee was created at the foreign affairs' office to coordinate reports of the search and rescue operation in Tawi-Tawi with Manila's Swiss and Dutch embassies, said the same official who requested for anonymity.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which has been holding on and off peace talks with the Philippines' government also offered assistance to locate the kidnappers, a MILF member who requested for anonymity said.
The Philippine government and the MILF initially inked an agreement to flush terrorists out of Mindanao.
There were earlier reports that the kidnappers were small time adventurers and "first-time kidnappers" from Tawi-Tawi who wanted to trade their victims with either the militant Abu Sayyaf group or the MILF.
