KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Unidentified gunmen kidnapped a Chinese tourist and a Filipino hotel worker, both women, from a beach resort on an island in Malaysian Borneo, the Chinese and Malaysian authorities said Thursday, spurring an international manhunt for the assailants.
The abductions late Wednesday appeared to be the work of insurgents from the nearby islands of the southern Philippines who have been fighting the Filipino government for years, security experts said.
The women were taken from the Singamata Reef Resort, a diving and snorkeling retreat built on stilts above a reef off Sabah, a state in eastern Malaysia.
Chinese tourists at the resort told the Chinese Huaxi Metropolitan Daily that they had heard gunshots as a group of gunmen stormed the hotel, grabbed the victims, and spirited them away on speedboats.
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There were about 60 Chinese guests at the hotel, the paper said.
Various armed groups, including Muslim separatist factions fighting to establish an independent state, operate throughout the southern Philippines and use kidnappings for ransom to help finance their operations.
The Foreign Affairs Department of the Philippines said in a statement Thursday that the country’s maritime forces and anti-kidnapping teams were “actively and closely coordinating with their Malaysian counterparts in exchanging information and in working toward the speedy resolution of the case.”