Hong Kong police search country park for kidnappers

Hundreds of heavily armed officers are searching one of Hong Kong's rural country parks in a massive operation to hunt down six men who fled with millions in ransom money after a kidnap, local media have reported.

The suspects, who took a 29-year-old woman from her home, freed her after relatives paid a reported HK$28 million ($3.61 million). They had initially demanded up to HK$50 million for the woman's release.

Footage from Cable TV showed uniformed officers descending on a village in the eastern part of the city in the early hours of Thursday, while hundreds of heavily armed officers have also been searching Ma On Shan Country Park since Tuesday, the South China Morning Post said.

Roadblocks have been set up and helicopters and marine vessels were deployed in the city-wide manhunt, which began after the unidentified woman was released, the SCMP added.

"The investigations for the case is ongoing," a police spokeswoman told AFP Thursday.

She said the search operation was taking place "(all) over the territory", without giving further detail.

"Arresting them is just a matter of time," an unnamed police source told the SCMP.

The southern Chinese city of seven million people is for the most part considered to be safe, with violent crimes in 2014 falling almost 10 percent from 2013. Robberies also fell 38.2 percent to 309 cases in 2014, compared to figures from 2013.

But a series of high-profile kidnapping cases shocked the city in the 1990s.

The eldest son of the city's richest man Li Ka-shing was kidnapped in 1996 by the infamous crime boss Cheung Tze-keung, nicknamed "Big Spender", who also kidnapped property tycoon Walter Kwok in 1997.

Cheung fled to China but was later arrested by mainland authorities and was executed in 1998.