Five Portuguese men missing in Cabinda

Five Portuguese construction workers have been missing since Friday night in the northern Angolan enclave of Cabinda, Reuters reported on Monday, quoting church-run radio. The five men, aged from 34 to 50, from the Portuguese city of Porto, disappeared while driving between a market in the city of Cabinda and a shipyard on its outskirts where they were staying, Radio Ecclesia said.

The missing men are employees of the civil construction firm Soares da Costa. The Angolan foreign ministry and the Portuguese embassy in Luanda said the army and police had been brought in to search for the missing men. A Cabinda independence movement, the Front for the Liberation of the Cabinda Enclave/Cabinda Armed Forces (FLEC-FAC), has held three Portuguese men and one Angolan since last May. It was unclear on Sunday if FLEC-FAC was involved in the latest disappearance.

Besides calling for independence for the enclave the rebels also demand that more government revenue from lucrative offshore oil fields be spent on improving conditions in the province. Cabinda is separated from the rest of Angola by a sliver of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).