MANILA, Oct 28: Human traffickers were preying on children displaced by the Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines, an independent monitor said on Tuesday.

The Visayan Forum Foundation, which monitors human trafficking in the Philippines, said groups trawl evacuation camps on Mindanao looking for child labourers to be flown abroad.

About 34 Filipino minors have been rescued by social workers from traffickers who smuggled them out of the conflict zones to work abroad the group’s president Cecilia Oebanda said.

She said her group recently saved a group of children aged between 14 and 16 at Manila airport who were on their way to the Middle East on fake passports.

“We were able to recover them,” Oebanda told reporters at the UN-sponsored Global Forum on Migration and Development.

She warned that the trend would continue amid chaos in evacuation camps scattered across Mindanao.—AFP