Gunmen kidnapped three people, including Asian expatriates, from the residential compound of chemical company Indorama in oil-rich southern Nigeria on Friday, a senior police officer said.
”There was an attack on the Indorama residential compound. Three people were taken,” Rivers State Police Commissioner Felix Ogbaudu said.
He said he was not sure of the nationalities of the three but that most of them were Asian expatriates.
”We are still trying to put all the facts together,” company spokesperson Jossy Nkwocha told said, adding the company would make a statement later in the day.
No one has claimed responsibility for this latest kidnapping, the second to hit the company, still referred to in the region as Eleme Petrochemical Company, in less than two weeks.
On May 19 two Indian nationals were abducted from the company’s premises on the outskirts of Port Harcourt, the capital of oil-rich Rivers State.
One civilian was killed in that incident and another injured.
Eleme Petrochemicals was a state-run firm before it was sold to Indorama, an Indonesian group last year. Many Asians work in the company.
About 40 foreigners were taken hostage in the Niger Delta last month.
About 180 foreigners — mostly oil workers — have been seized by militant groups and armed gangs in the region in the past 18 months. Most were released after a few days or a few weeks.
Four United States oil workers were released by their unidentified captors on Wednesday and the most high-profile armed group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (Mend) had planned to release the six oil workers it is holding this week.
But Mend said early Friday the release was delayed because of logistical problems in handing the men over to their employer.
”They would have been released today [Friday] but we requested for a chopper and this request was turned down,” a spokesperson for the group said in an email to Agence France-Presse.
He did not specify who had refused the request for the helicopter. — AFP
