China on Saturday ordered its Foreign Ministry and its embassy in Nigeria to ”give all their efforts” to free five Chinese telecommunications workers taken hostage a day earlier in the African nation.
”China’s leaders attach the highest importance to this,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Liu Jianchao said in a statement released on Saturday.
”President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have ordered the Foreign Ministry and China’s embassy in Nigeria to find a way to ensure the lives and safety of the abductees and give all their efforts to save them.”
The five workers were abducted in Nigeria’s oil-rich yet unrest-plagued southern Niger Delta by unidentified armed men.
No group or individual has yet claimed responsibility.
The Chinese spokesperson said relevant Chinese officials were ”actively cooperating” with their Nigerian counterparts in the effort to secure the release of the workers.
Media reports quoted China’s Nigeria ambassador Xu Jianguo as saying the abductees were employees of Sichuan Telecommunications Company.
More than 60 foreigners, mostly oil workers, were kidnapped last year by armed separatists in the delta region, who demand that a greater share of the region’s oil revenue be given to its ethnic Ijaw people.
All of the foreign hostages were eventually released except for three Italians and a Lebanese working for an Italian oil firm who were abducted last month. — AFP
