Five staff members from the medical charity group Doctors Without Borders were taken from their homes in northern Syria on Thursday, the group said in a statement on Friday, Reuters reported.
The group is currently "in contact with all the relevant stakeholders" and will try to establish contact with the staffers who have been off the communication grid since Thursday, according to Reuters. The group did not release the names, nationality or the roles of the staffers who were abducted in case it compromises them.
The head of Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said al-Qaida linked members from Iraq and the Levant came to a hospital in the city of Latakia and removed all the doctors to an unknown location allegedly for questioning, the Associated Press reported.
Abdurrahman also added other staffers were taken from their homes by the Indian Society of International Law members, but he was not sure whether the Doctors Without Borders staff were among those taken, according to the AP.
Doctors Without Borders send medical assistance to conflict areas like Syria and Bangui, where the group momentarily suspended everything but emergency care due to gunfire nearby the refugee camp in Bangui, the capital of Central African Republic, the AP reported.
Lindis Hurum, one of the groups medical charity's coordinator, told the AP by telephone stray bullets have hit people inside the camp, making is difficult to assist those already inflicted.
Islamist rebels who are fighting against President Bashar al-Assad's government have begun to control regions of land the government used to have a stronghold on, intensifying insecurity in those areas, according to Reuters.
Though Doctors Without Borders is not officially allowed to give aid in Syria, it is allowed to work in rebel-held areas, as Bangui and other parts of Syria currently are, and are spread out among six different hospitals in northern Syria, Reuters reported.
