Five foreigners working for US oil company Exxon Mobil have been kidnapped and two Nigerians killed in an attack in the volatile Niger Delta region, an industry source said yesterday.
The five, whose nationalities were unknown, were seized late on Tuesday by armed men who attacked an oil installation at Eket, in the southern state of Akwa Ibom.
The source also said two Nigerian employees of Exxon were killed.
The assailants were not immediately identified and there was no immediate claim of responsibility.
But the Niger Delta has seen a resurgence of violence by separatist militants seeking local control of the country's oil resources.
On Monday, approximately 70 men attacked a site belonging to the Royal Dutch Shell company in neighboring Rivers State. Military and company sources said 14 soldiers were killed and 25 workers were kidnapped.
Nine of the workers were freed on Tuesday, and authorities in the state were negotiating with the kidnappers to obtain the release of the 16 others.
Responsibility for that attack was claimed by the Joint Revolutionary Council (JRC), a group of several separatist movements.
The JRC said in a statement published by several dailies that the attack was aimed at obtaining the immediate release of Alhaji Mujahid Dokubo Asari, the imprisoned leader of the Niger Delta People's Volunteer Force (NDPVF).
In October last year Asari was charged in an Abuja Federal High Court with treason, illegal assembly and conspiracy.
The Niger Delta is home to Nigeria's multi-billion-dollar oil and gas industry, but each of its inhabitants live on less than US$1 a day.
Nigeria, a country of 130 million people, is Africa's leading oil producer and the world's sixth biggest crude exporter with a normal daily output of 2.6 million barrels.
But attacks on oil installations in the Niger Delta region have cut about a quarter of oil production since the start of the year and at least five Nigerian staff employed in the oil sector have been killed by unknown attackers.
Following an increase in the number of abductions in August, the Nigerian army launched a widespread manhunt for the kidnap gangs on the orders of President Olusegun Obasanjo.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS