Authorities in the Philippines have dispatched helicopters, boats and airplanes to search for four people abducted by gunmen from a marina deep in the country’s south. Three of those abducted are foreign travelers – two of them Canadian – and their seizure shortly before midnight Monday has prompted a large-scale response in a country that sees tourism as one of its most important sources of economic growth.
In Davao City, the southern Philippine center near the Holiday Ocean View Marina where the people were taken, a police hotline has been flooded with hundreds of tips. One reported a sighting of foreigners at a location not far away, but when soldiers were dispatched to look, they found nothing.
The search has also moved into the air, with spotters on military search flights peering down on the waves up to 200 kilometres south of the the Island Garden City of Samal, where the marina is located, in hopes of seeing something.
