Six foreign oil workers, kidnapped from a nightclub in Nigeria, were released on Wednesday night after 10 days in captivity, authorities said.
The six men — two Britons, an American, German, Irish and Pole — were abducted at gunpoint from a nightclub in the southern oil city of Port Harcourt on August 13.
”The hostages were released. All six of them. They are looking well,” said Magnus Abe, a spokesperson for Rivers State government, where they were abducted.
The release means that only one Lebanese construction worker is still being held out of 17 mostly foreign oil workers seized this month in a string of seven separate kidnappings in the oil producing Niger Delta this month.
At least 10 militants were killed in a gunfight with troops in a botched hostage release on Sunday. The captive, a Nigerian employee of Royal Dutch Shell, was also killed.
Violence in the delta, which has been going on for more than a decade, stems from widespread resentment by residents that their region provides the bulk of Nigeria’s wealth while they have seen few benefits.
But the violence has taken on a momentum of its own, with kidnappings for ransoms, battles for control of a lucrative trade in stolen crude oil and fighting between militias sponsored by rival politicians all part of the equation.
Nigerian oil output has been reduced by almost a quarter since February, when a series of militant attacks on the oil industry forced Shell to evacuate workers from oilfields producing 500 000 barrels a day. – Reuters