Sat Jun 4,10:19 AM ET
GENEVA (AFP) - Two employees of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who were kidnapped Thursday by armed men in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo are in good health, a spokesman for the medical aid group said.
"We have received an indirect indication that our employees are in good health," MSF spokesman Aymeric Peguillan told AFP in Geneva, adding that the pair were "being held by a militia group".
The two men, a French aid worker and a Congolese driver, disappeared on Thursday as they headed to a camp in the troubled region of Ituri. Witnesses told MSF that they had been stopped and led away by unidentified armed men.
MSF did not know, however, which of the numerous militia groups operating in Ituri was behind the kidnapping, whether it had been planned in advance, nor what the group's aims were, Peguillan said.
"The climate is still extremely volatile throughout the region, and that will not help secure their release," he added.
"We call on all the armed factions present to do all they can to appease the situation."
He said MSF, whose name means Doctors Without Borders
' name=c1> SEARCHNews | News Photos | Images | Web' name=c3> Doctors Without Borders, was in discussion with several armed groups as well as peacekeepers in the region, to prevent an upsurge of fighting that would harm efforts to free its employees.
"We are in talks with the UN mission in DR Congo (MONUC), the Congolese Armed Forces in (the provincial capital) Bunia, as well as with our contacts within the region's various armed groups," Peguillan said.
MSF has also sent an envoy to the capital Kinshasa to discuss the kidnapping with the government, MONUC and the United Nations
' name=c1> SEARCHNews | News Photos | Images | Web' name=c3> United Nations envoy to the region, he said.
The abduction took place in the same area as an attack on UN peacekeepers on Thursday, one of whom was killed and three wounded when their helicopters came under fire about 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Bunia.
The helicopters had been carrying a human rights mission investigating claims of rape and kidnapping of women by fighters of the Nationalist and Integrationist Front (FNI), an armed militia of the Lendu ethnic group.
MSF warned three months ago of a horrific escalation in the scale of rapes in Ituri affecting thousands of women, children and some men, aged between four and 80 years-old, as fighting also surged.
Inter-ethnic clashes between Hema and Lendu fighters in the volatile Ituri region, near the Ugandan border, have claimed at least 60,000 lives and forced more than 500,000 people to flee from their homes since 1999.
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