The mayor of the southern Philippine city of Zamboanga, a dash away from the notorious kidnapping hotbed Basilan island, has renewed the appeal for fast release of city teachers kidnapped by armed men three weeks ago.

"We are trying to do everything within our capability to secure safe release of the teachers without paying ransom," Mayor Celso Lobregat told Xinhua in his office in the bustle city center late Friday.

Freires Quizon, 29, Janette de los Reyes, 27, and Rafael Mayonado, 22, were snatched by unidentified armed men at gunpoint on Jan. 23 on a jump-boat transferring them from a small community school in Sacol Island to Zamboanga city proper across the Basilan Strait.

Lobregat said the authorities were able to pinpoint the captive 's position and had received many proof-of-life contacts from the hostages.

There were media reports saying the captured teachers were held in the hinterlands of Basilan and a ransom payment of 6 million pesos (127,660 U.S. dollars) has been requested.

Lobregat did not immediately comment on the claim but said the teachers are from "very very poor families that can't afford huge ransom payment."

The mayor said these teachers were instrumental in providing basic education to Muslim communities on far-flung islands situated in the narrow strait that divides Basilan main island and Zamboanga Penisular.

"We are trying to bring education to where it is most needed and as the situation develops there would be no more teachers who would like teach in those remote Muslim villages," said the mayor, whose city's 600,000 population has large portion of Muslim residents.

Last Wednesday, Zamboanga police anti-kidnapping task force successfully rescued Eliseo Hablo, a local fishing and bakery businessman, from a safe-house in the city before it could be sold to Muslim militants in Basilan, through whom, the victim might end up in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf group, who is currently holding a Swiss, an Italian and a local working for International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

Ten suspects in Hablo's case, including two policemen and a lawyer, were arrested, with implications that they might have participated in a previous abduction of a female college student in town.

Lobregat said the success of rescue operation is a result of professional handlings, and no ransom was paid.

"Of the two ways to stop kidnappings, one is to stop paying ransom, the other is to get the kidnappers and put them in jail," Lobregat said.

Security situation became volatile over the past month in Basilan and Sulu islands, as Abu Sayyaf and affiliated gangs have taken on a spree of kidnappings for ransom. At least 13 people were abducted while nine, including three foreigners, remain in captive by Saturday.

Zamboanga also saw its share of violence itching up, from three kidnapping cases last year to 17 reported cases so far this year, of which four were confirmed.

Bob Jaldon, a veteran journalist and now a local paper columnist, told Xinhua that Abu Sayyaf had their first taste of blood in Zamboanga by bombing a missionary ship back in 1991, a decade before most people knew the term terrorism.

Religious and political reasons might have been the motive of Abu Sayyaf's earlier indiscriminant bombings and kidnappings but the group has become heavily reliant on ransom payment to compensate the loss of overseas funding, Jaldon said.

"All for money," Lobregat explained that despite political concern was mentioned in ICRC case almost all abductions are monetary in nature.

But the mayor re-assured the public and outside world that " Zamboanga is safe."

Local and foreign dwellers in Zamboanga also shrugged off the threat of being caught in the latest spate of kidnappings.

"At first I was shocked to learn that teachers were kidnapped. But it happened in the remote island. The city is rather safe, and my school is very safe," said Cai Yaping, a Chinese college graduate who volunteered teaching Chinese in Zamboanga Chong Hua High School.

(Xinhua News Agency Feburary 14, 2009)