China sent a team of officials to Sudan yesterday to help find the two oil workers who went missing after being kidnapped by some unknown militants.

The militants on Monday killed four of the nine Chinese workers they had kidnapped from near an oil field in Southern Kordofan, bordering Darfur region, on Oct 19. Three of the workers have been rescued.

Officials of the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce and the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC), the workers' employer, "will urge Sudan to put in its best efforts to rescue the missing workers", Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said.