by HAROLD ISAAC, As­so­ci­at­ed Press

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Two of 17 mem­bers of a mis­sion­ary group who were kid­napped more than a month ago are safe and “in good spir­its” af­ter be­ing freed in Haiti, their U.S..-based church or­ga­ni­za­tion an­nounced.

Chris­t­ian Aid Min­istries is­sued a state­ment Sun­day say­ing it could not give the names of those re­leased, why they were freed or oth­er in­for­ma­tion.

“While we re­joice at this re­lease, our hearts are with the 15 peo­ple who are still be­ing held,” the Ohio-based group said.

The mis­sion­ar­ies were kid­napped by the 400 Ma­wozo gang on Oct. 16. There are five chil­dren in the group of 16 U.S. cit­i­zens and one Cana­di­an, in­clud­ing an 8-month-old. Their Hait­ian dri­ver al­so was ab­duct­ed, ac­cord­ing to a lo­cal hu­man rights or­ga­ni­za­tion.

The leader of the 400 Ma­wozo gang has threat­ened to kill the hostages un­less his de­mands are met. Au­thor­i­ties have said the gang was de­mand­ing $1 mil­lion per per­son, al­though it wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear that in­clud­ed the chil­dren in the group.

The spokesman for Haiti’s Na­tion­al Po­lice, Gary Desrosiers, con­firmed to The As­so­ci­at­ed Press that two hostages were re­leased on Sun­day.

The FBI, which is help­ing Hait­ian au­thor­i­ties re­cov­er the cap­tives, de­clined to com­ment.

The re­lease comes as Haiti strug­gles with a spike in gang-re­lat­ed vi­o­lence and kid­nap­pings, with the U.S. gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly urg­ing U.S. cit­i­zens to leave Haiti amid deep­en­ing in­se­cu­ri­ty and a se­vere lack of fu­el blamed on gangs block­ing gas dis­tri­b­u­tion ter­mi­nals. On Fri­day, Cana­da an­nounced it was pulling all but es­sen­tial per­son­nel from its em­bassy.

The fu­el short­age has forced hos­pi­tals to turn away pa­tients and par­a­lyzed pub­lic trans­porta­tion, with some schools clos­ing and busi­ness­es short­en­ing their work hours.

Haiti al­so is try­ing to re­cov­er from the Ju­ly 7 as­sas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Jovenel Moi­se and a 7.2 mag­ni­tude earth­quake that struck in mid-Au­gust, killing more than 2,200 peo­ple and de­stroy­ing tens of thou­sands of homes.