Five workers of U.S. oil company Occidental Petroleum Corporation have been kidnapped in the east of Colombia, the company said Saturday.
According to the company, the kidnapping took place Friday evening in the eastern department of Arauca where the oil company’s Caricare oil field is located.
The oil workers were kidnapped by armed men in civilian clothes at a road block, general Jaime Reyes, commander of the 18th Brigade told radio station Caracol.
“At six o’clock Friday afternoon two people, both armed, approached the workers, threatened them and then kidnapped them,” the military commander said.
Reyes would not say which illegal armed group is suspected of the kidnapping.
The kidnapping comes one day after the FARC release the last of 23 oil workers who were kidnapped in March. The same guerrilla group still holds four Chinese oil workers captive after kidnapping them in the southern Caqueta department in June.