Four foreign oil workers were kidnapped by unidentified armed
men in the south of Nigeria on Monday, the police said.
The people were taken away from a nightclub in Port Harcourt,
south Nigeria.
A spokesperson for the police said no arrests have been made so
far.
The kidnapping came after three kidnapped Filipino oil workers
were freed in the same city on the same day. The men have been
handed over to the embassy officials of the Philippines in Port
Harcourt.
The latest abduction of oil workers in Nigeria is the fifth such
incident that has occurred in the oil-rich south this month.
Since the beginning of this month, a total of 14 foreign oil
workers have been kidnapped by indigenous militants in the
oil-rich, but trouble-torn Niger Delta.
Indigenous militants believed to be Ijaw youths took one Belgian
and one Moroccan oil worker hostage on Aug. 10. The two hostages
were released late Monday in Port Harcourt, the capital of
Nigeria's southern state of Rivers. However, Rivers State Police
Public Relations Officer Ireju Barasua told Xinhua that she had not
been informed about the release.
On Aug. 3, a German oil worker was kidnapped by a group of about
10 men dressed in camouflage uniforms in the oil city of Port
Harcourt.
Just one day after the hostage taking incident, three Filipino
oil workers were taken away by militants in Bonny, a coastal town
in Rivers state.
Four expatriate oil workers, two Norwegians and two Ukrainians,
were abducted Aug. 9 by militants in the Ekeremor, Bayelsa
state.
Kidnappings of foreign oil workers and attacks on oil facilities
by militant youths since the beginning of this year have forced
Nigeria, the largest oil producer in Africa or the world's sixth
largest oil exporter, to cut production by 670,000 barrels per day,
or 26 percent of its crude production.
(Xinhua News Agency August 15, 2006)
