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Nigeria to stay tough over hostage-takers despite Briton's death
AFP
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com 11 24 06
The Nigerian military Thursday said they would maintain a tough stance on hostage-takers despite the killing of a British hostage caught in the crossfire between the kidnappers and their rescuers.
The British Foreign Office in London named the victim as David Hunt, 58, from Teeside in Northern England, who worked for a subsidiary of Italian oil giant ENI.
Nigerian navy spokesman Captain Obiora Medani expressed regret at the killing but said it would not alter the military's resolve, buoyed by the rescue of the other six hostages.
An official government statement said the operation was the "first commando rescue operation" in the restive Niger Delta, where workers for foreign oil companies are frequently targeted by kidnappers.
An Italian hostage was also injured in the firefight as the hostage-takers attempted to flee aboard a boat and a Nigerian naval patrol. Two militants were killed along with the British hostage. Two men from Finland, a Romanian, a Pole and a Filippino were rescued unharmed.
"Yesterday's operation is in line with the government's directive to flush out criminals and terrorists from the Niger Delta," Medani said.
"It is unfortunate that a foreigner was killed during the operation ... We are not going to change our strategy. We will smoke out the militants until they desist from their criminal and deadly acts."
In August, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo ordered the military to get tougher on what he described as the "terrorists" and "criminals" carrying out attacks in the delta region.
Government claims that two militants were killed were disputed by a spokesman from the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).
"None of the kidnappers died. All seven escaped (from the navy) and six were captured by a local vigilante group in the vicinity and are being taken for interrogation in one of our camps," the group said in a statement.
"The kidnappers were seven in number and four of them were armed," a MEND spokesman who declined to be named told AFP.
Traditionally, Nigerian authorities have always favoured negotiating with kidnappers.
Wednesday's hostage killing drew widespread condemnation in Nigeria, both from government officials and from non-violent minority interest groups in the Delta.
"We are warning those involved to desist as the full wrath of the laws will soon catch up with them," said Emmanuel Okah, spokesman for the Rivers State governor.
Meanwhile, rights activist and environmental campaigner Ledun Mitee, who heads the non-violent Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People in the Delta, insisted his group does not "encourage hostage-takings and attacks on oil installations," decrying them as "condemnable acts that should stop".
"We are saddened by such a development because it has put Nigeria on the wrong side of history being the first time that a foreigner has been killed" in such circumstances, he told AFP.
Shell is Nigeria's biggest oil operator, accounting for around half of the west African country's daily output of 2.6 million barrels, but recent unrest in the region has forced the firm to close down many of its oil facilities.
Shell has lost half of its around one million barrels daily oil output in Nigeria to the unrest in the past months.Some 600 people, including two Americans and one Briton, have been killed in the region over the past six years, while 873 others have either been detained or held hostage on oil facilities, according to statistics compiled by AFP since July 2000.
A further 187 oil workers, about half of them foreigners, were abducted and later released by armed separatists or militants during the same period.
In April 2004, two American oil workers, were killed by pirates in the region.
In 2006 to date at least 37 troops deployed to quell violence in the delta, the country's oil hub, have been killed.
Militants and local communities accuse foreign oil companies of failing to honour agreements with host communities on provision of social amenities and jobs, and continue to demand a more equitable share of the oil revenue derived from the region.
Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and world's fifth largest oil exporter, derives more than 95 percent of its foreign exchange from oil.
AFP 23 2054 GMT 11 06
Copyright© 2006 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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