TALLINN (AFP) -- Estonia has appealed to Moscow for help over the reported kidnapping of an Estonian national in Russia's Caucasus republic of Dagestan, officials said Monday.

Dagestani businessman Apandi Makhmudov, a leading figure in an Estonian-Dagestani cultural society, has told the Estonian authorities that his daughter Aminat, a 19-year-old student at a Tallinn university, was kidnapped by seven masked assailants while she visited her father in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala last week.

"We have sent a diplomatic note to the Russian foreign ministry seeking immediate aid in solving the case," Ehtel Halliste, an Estonian foreign ministry spokeswoman, told AFP.

"The father of the girl has turned to the Estonian foreign ministry for help in what he says was the kidnapping of his daughter," she added.

Makhmudov said that the Dagestani police suggested Aminat could have been kidnapped to be married, and that he has received no assistance in the case in Dagestan. The Estonian parliament's Estonian-Russian group also appealed to the Russian authorities "to offer speedy assistance."

"The Makhmudov family has done a lot to promote relations between Estonia and Russia by organizing performances of cultural figures from Dagestan in Estonia," Sergei Ivanov, head of the parliamentary grouping, said in a letter to Russia's ambassador to Estonia.

"It is our duty to help the people in trouble," Ivanov said.