Militants strike Nigerian gas plant, kidnap Koreans

By Austin Ekeinde

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria (Reuters) – Armed militants attacked
a natural gas plant operated by Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria’s
southern delta on Wednesday, killing at least four soldiers and
kidnapping five South Korean contractors.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)
claimed responsibility and said the Koreans would be freed in
exchange for a jailed militia leader who is on trial for
treason and was denied bail by a Nigerian court on Tuesday.

The attack comes just three days after eight foreign oil
workers were released by a different group of kidnappers, and
is the latest sign of rising militancy across the oil heartland
of Africa’s top producer.

MEND, whose attacks have already forced the closure of a
quarter of Nigerian oil output since February, had previously
demanded the release of militia leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari as
one of several conditions for ending the violence.

“The government of Nigeria may be interested more in a
prisoner exchange rather than releasing the person whose
release we have demanded,” MEND said in an emailed statement.

The style of Wednesday’s attack was similar to MEND’s raids
in January and February, when dozens of militants armed with
assault rifles, dynamite and rockets overpowered troops, bombed
oil and gas facilities and abducted foreign workers.

“In the next few weeks our attacks will increase (in)
frequency with the destruction of several facilities of crucial
importance to the oil industry,” MEND said, advising workers to
leave the oil-producing wetlands region in southern Nigeria.

MEND, whose leadership is unknown, is pressing for more
local power over the Niger Delta’s oil resources and has said
it aims to bring the OPEC nation’s output to a complete halt.

Poverty, lawlessness, corruption and struggles for control
of a lucrative oil smuggling business fuel unrest in the delta.

The kidnap comes months after Nigeria awarded the state
Korean National Oil Company (KNOC) exploration rights in return
for billions of dollars in investment in Nigeria’s decaying
industrial infrastructure.

FIREFIGHT

In Wednesday’s pre-dawn raid, MEND said it captured and
burned a houseboat used by army and police assigned to protect
Shell’s Cawthorne Channel natural gas plant, and an unknown
number of security forces were killed in a fierce firefight.

The militants then kidnapped the five Koreans, whom they
said had been taken to a MEND base where they were safe and
would not be harmed unless the base was attacked.

As the militants left the facility, they came under attack
from four Nigerian army boats. The militants said they sank one
of the boats, killing at least five of its six occupants, while
the other boats suffered an unknown number of casualties.

A navy spokesman confirmed that the houseboat was
destroyed, but did not have any more details. An army spokesman
said one naval officer and three naval personnel were killed.

MEND said one of its fighters was killed and two injured.

In Seoul, a Foreign Ministry official confirmed that five
South Koreans were kidnapped. Three work for Daewoo Engineering
and Construction Co. and the other two are with Korea Gas
Corp., the official said.

The attack forced Shell to shut the natural gas production
plant, but had no impact on oil production in the area,
industry sources said. The gas from Cawthorne Channel area is
normally sent to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas export plant
at Bonny.

Shell officials declined to give details of the attack.

Earlier, a coalition of three militant groups calling
itself the Joint Revolutionary Council claimed responsibility
for the attack. The coalition includes MEND and splinter groups
of Asari’s Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force, which fought
sporadic battles with troops in 2004 before signing a truce and
disarming last year.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ashby in Lagos, Estelle
Shirbon in Abuja, Jon Herskovitz and Park Sung-woo in Seoul)