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Foreign oil worker killed, two captured in Nigeria

Gunmen killed one foreign oil worker and kidnapped two in an attack on Thursday on a compound belonging to Italian oil company Saipem in southern Nigeria, a company source said.

The source, who asked not to be identified, said one Colombian worker was killed in the attack and a second Colombian worker and a Filipino were taken hostage.

The same source had earlier said that a Portuguese national was seriously injured in the attack and a Colombian kidnapped.

It was the first attack of this scale on an oil company in southern Nigeria for more than two months.

Major Musa Sagir, a spokesman for the Joint Task Force protecting oil personnel and facilities in the restive Niger Delta, confirmed the attack and the death of the Colombian.

"There was an attack on Saipem today. The details of the incident are still sketchy," he said.

"There was the sound of gunshots and the staff all ran out," the Saipem source said.

He said the attackers arrived by boat and that the shooting lasted for no more than five minutes.

"The Colombian was killed by a stray bullet," he said.

The attack comes just days after the most vocal and best-equipped militant group in the region, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, threatened to resume its attacks on oil targets following the arrest of its spokesman Jomo Gbomo, aka Henry Okah, in Angola for alleged arms trafficking.

Kidnappings have continued unabated in the Delta in the past two or three months, but, with foreign oil workers getting harder to seize, the armed groups have tended since July to target family members of prominent Nigerians and hold them to ransom.
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