**An Irish priest has been seized by gunmen in the troubled southern Philippines, local police say.**They say the six gunmen, said to be Islamic militants, entered a house in Pagadian City, on Mindanao island, and took the priest away at gunpoint.
They then fled with the priest in a minivan before boarding a boat.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The Philippine army has been fighting Abu Sayyaf rebels in the region.
“We’ve alerted all our units as well as the military to be on the lookout and intercept the gunmen,” Angelo Sunglao, police chief in western Mindanao region, told reporters.
“We can’t speculate yet on who is behind the kidnapping, but the Abu Sayyaf is known to be operating near the area,” he added.
Abu Sayyaf is one of the smallest but deadliest Islamist militant groups in the largely Roman Catholic Philippines.
Established in the early 1990s, it has kidnapped dozens of foreign aid workers, missionaries and tourists in the south.
It was blamed for the country’s most deadly bomb attacks, on a ferry in 2004 that killed more than 100 people.