Officials say six armed hostage-takers have been arrested by Cambodian police.

Masked gunmen seized 29 kindergarten pupils at the Siem Reap International School in northwest Cambodia on Thursday morning. Many of them are the children of expatriate hotel workers.

A resident, who said she had seen a list of the children held, said the hostages were American, Irish, British, Australian, Singaporean, Canadian, Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese, Swiss, Indonesian, Indian, Italian and Filipino.

She said the gunmen had let one class go, but they are holding another kindergarten class and one teacher.

Officials say the hostage-takers demanded up to 30,000 US dollars, weapons and a 12-seater van to make their escape. No solution has been reached in the negotiations with them.

The Thai Foreign Ministry said they have not been contacted by the Cambodian authorities about any request by the gunmen to escape into Thailand.

Governments around the world were making frantic efforts to establish whether any of their citizens were among the children being held.

Source: Xinhua/CRI news