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)