The Chinese embassy in the the Turkish capital of Ankara confirmed today the disappearance of three Chinese nationals in the country. 

The incident occured at around 9 PM on August 24 at a Chinese-led thermal power plant construction site in the Silopi District of Şırnak Province. The attackers were reported to be armed with long-barreled rifles and kidnapped the workers from a local store, according to local officials. A security guard was injured during the abduction.

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Reports from the private Dogan news agency and the local Hurriyet Daily News newspaper suggest the three were seized by militants with the outlawed Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK), a separatist group operating in Turkey's southeast for an independent state for the country's Kurdish minority. The group is regarded as a terrorist organization by several governments and NATO.

However, Silopi is at the juncture of the northern Syrian and Iraqi borders, leaving open the possibility that soldiers of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, may have carried out the raid. Silopi has seen a mass exodus of Yazidis, a religious minority massacred by ISIS soldiers, surge across the border in recent weeks.

The construction product is being overseen by the Beijing-based China Machinery Engineering Corporation. Chinese embassy officials heavily emphasized the abduction with their Turkish counterparts, demanding local authorities do their utmost to rescue the missing three, and to step up security measures across the country where Chinese citizens are working. 

Turkish security forces, in coordination with Chinese officials, have reportedly launched a wide scale rescue operation. In a confirmed attack, PKK fighters fired on a border control station in Hâkkari Province further to the east, with no reported injuries. In 2013, the PKK entered into a ceasefire with Turkish authorities that saw the group withdraw from Turkish territory into Kurdish lands in northern Iraq, but sporadic PKK-affliliated incidents still occur in Turkey. 

TagsPKK, abduction, Kidnapping, Turkey, Kurds