Briton ‘kidnapped’ in Nigeria
The UK foreign office investigates reports that a British citizen is one of seven people to have been kidnapped by gunmen in rural northern Nigeria.
Gunmen attacked a camp for a construction company, killing a guard and kidnapping seven foreign workers from Britain, Greece, Italy and Lebanon, Nigerian authorities said, in the biggest kidnapping yet in a region under attack by Islamic extremists.
The attack took place on Saturday night in Jama’re, a town in the rural part of Bauchi state. The gunmen first attacked a local prison, burning two police trucks, Bauchi state police spokesman Hassan Muhammed told journalists.
The gunmen then targeted a worker’s camp for a construction company called Setraco, which is in the area building a road, Muhammed said. The gunmen shot dead a guard at the camp before kidnapping the foreign workers, the spokesman said.
Adamu Aliyu, the chairman of the local government area that encompasses Jama’re, identified those kidnapped as one British citizen, one Greek, one Italian and four Lebanese.
The Italian news agency ANSA later said authorities confirmed an Italian had been kidnapped in the attack. It quoted Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi saying the safety of the hostage must be given “absolute priority.”
The UK foreign office would not confirm the news but told Channel 4 News it was aware of the reports and was investigating the situation.
Bloody campaign
Nigeria‘s predominantly Muslim north has been under attack by the radical Islamic sect known as Boko Haram in the last year and a half. The country’s weak central government has been unable to stop the group’s bloody guerrilla campaign of shootings and bombings. The sect is blamed for killing at least 792 people in 2012 alone, according to an AP count.
Foreigners, long abducted by militant groups and criminal gangs for ransom in Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta, have become increasingly targeted in Nigeria’s north as the violence has grown. However, abductions of foreigners in the north have seen hostages regularly killed.
In May, gunmen in Kaduna state shot and killed a Lebanese and a Nigerian construction worker, while kidnapping another Lebanese employee. Later that month, kidnappers shot a German hostage dead during a rescue operation.
Gunmen who authorities say have links to Boko Haram also kidnapped an Italian and a British man last year in northern Kebbi State who were later killed during a rescue operation by Nigerian soldiers backed up by British special forces. The sect later denied taking part in that abduction, which left Italian authorities angry that the nation was not consulted before the failed rescue attempt.
Foreign embassies in Nigeria have issued travel warnings regarding northern Nigeria for months. Worries about abductions have increased in recent weeks with the French military intervention in Mali, as its troops and Malian soldiers try to rout out Islamic fighters who took over that nation’s north in the months following a military coup.