Five Iranian technicians working on a power plant project in Syria have been abducted by an unidentified group of people, the Iranian embassy in Damascus has said.

The embassy "has called on the kidnappers to immediately release" the technicians, the embassy said in a statement carried on the Mehr news agency on Wednesday.

The five men were taken early on Wednesday as they were on their way to work on the project in Homs, a western city that is a major flashpoint in the ongoing uprising against Presider Bashar al-Assad's government, according to the report.

The technicians had been involved in building the city's power plant over the past two years, the state-owend Press TV channel reported.