Photos of abducted foreigners Kjartan Sekkingstad (L), a Norwegian national, John Ridsdel (center photos) of Canada and his compatriot Robert Hall

AFP/Manila

Gunmen have kidnapped two Canadian tourists, a Norwegian employee and a Filipina from a luxury resort island in the conflict-racked southern Philippines, police said Tuesday.

The suspects sailed two motorboats into a marina on Samal island and seized the four from aboard yachts just before midnight on Monday, said Superintendent Antonio Rivera, a local police spokesman.

Law enforcement boats and helicopters were scouring the waters around the island on Tuesday to try to stop the kidnappers from leaving the area, according to Rivera.

"They appeared to target the foreigners. They went straight for the yachts," Rivera told AFP.

"(But) we still don't have anything. We're blank. No group has taken responsibility and there is no demand for ransom."

A police report identified the Canadian tourists as John Ridsdel, 68, and Robert Hall, 50. The Norwegian, who was working at the marina, was identified as Kjartan Sekkinstad, 56.

The 40-year-old Filipina, identified only as Tess, was a companion of one of the foreign tourists, Rivera said.

A Japanese couple was nearly abducted but they fought back, he said.

A woman working at the Holiday Ocean View resort, which operates the marina, confirmed the incident to AFP but declined to comment further.

The Canadian and Norwegian embassies in Manila declined to comment.

A Norwegian foreign ministry spokeswoman in Oslo, Lothe Salvesen, told AFP the government was investigating the reports of the abductions, but could not confirm any details.

Samal island, a short boat ride from the southern commercial centre of Davao on Mindanao island, is famed for powdery white sand beaches and dive spots, with resorts there charging up to $500 a night.

The area, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) southeast of Manila, is a popular stop for foreign tourists who sail around the nation's many tropical islands.

But the Philippines' southern region has endured decades of conflict, with Muslim rebels waging a separatist conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

Parts of Mindanao are also home to more extreme Muslim militants, the most infamous of which are the Abu Sayyaf. They engage in frequent kidnappings of locals as well as foreigners in often successful efforts to extort ransoms.

The Abu Sayyaf is a ragtag group of several hundred men founded in the 1990s that has withstood US-backed military operations to extinguish it.

In the most recent kidnapping of foreigners, Abu Sayyaf gunmen seized a German couple in April last year while they were sailing off the far southwestern island of Palawan, a popular tourist destination.

The couple was released six months later, with the Abu Sayyaf claiming it had received all of the 250 million pesos ($5.4 million) it demanded in ransom.

The Abu Sayyaf is currently holding nine hostages, including four foreigners, in the jungles of Jolo island in Mindanao's southwest, a local military spokesman told AFP on Tuesday.