Ransom Set For Kidnapped Missionary Group From Ohio: Report

HAITI — The kidnappers of a missionary group working in Haiti are now demanding $17 million in ransom, according to reports.

Seventeen missionaries, including five children, were abducted on Saturday. They were building an orphanage in Haiti, according to Ohio-based Christian Aid Ministries.

The group's abductors now want $1 million per abducted person, according to The Wall Street Journal. The five kidnapped children are 8 months, 3, 6, 14 and 15.

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The U.S. Embassy, Christian Aid Ministries and Haiti government officials are trying to secure the release of the missionaries.

“We are calling on authorities to take action,” said Jean-Louis Abaki, a moto taxi driver who joined the strike Monday to decry killings and kidnappings in the hemisphere's poorest nation.

Haiti is once again struggling with a spike in gang-related kidnappings that had diminished after President Jovenel Moïse was fatally shot at his private residence on July 7, and following a 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck southwest Haiti in August and killed more than 2,200 people.

Reporting from The Associated Press was used in this article.