The Philippines is dispatching a team to Syria to bring home as many as 9,000 Filipinos still in that country amidst the worsening security situation there, the foreign department said Thursday.

The team from the departments of foreign affairs, labour and interior, will seek to locate the many unregistered Filipino workers in Syria and help them leave the country, spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

"They will do everything possible to contact our people there especially those undocumented OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] so that we can bring them out of harm's way immediately," he told reporters.