LAGOS: Gunmen attacked a barge belonging to an oil services company off the coast of Nigeria yesterday, killing two Nigerian sailors and kidnapping four foreigners, the navy said.
The gunmen stormed a vessel in the Gulf of Guinea that belongs to the Sea Trucks Group, company spokeswoman Corrie van Kessel told AFP, who confirmed that four of the firm's employees were taken in the raid.
“At this time Sea Trucks Group is making every effort to ascertain the whereabouts of its personnel,” she told AFP.
Nigeria's navy spokesman Commodore Kabir Aliyu said during the attack “four expatriates are reported to have been kidnapped from the vessel; two sailors were killed.”
He said those kidnapped were from Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Thailand. The attack took place at roughly 1 p.m. yesterday, 35 nautical miles off Nigeria's oil rich coastal area in the Gulf of Guinea, the navy and the company said.
The region has seen a rise in the number of reported pirate attacks this year.
The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said in a report released last month that there had been 32 piracy incidents recorded off the coasts of Benin, Nigeria and Togo in the first half of 2012, up from the 25 attacks in 2011.
An IMB official told AFP that armed assaults on vessels in the area have been under-reported for several years. Many of the raids have involved “high levels of violence,” the report further said.
Aliyu told AFP that six naval personnel were stationed on board the Sea Trucks Group vessel following a request from the company. Besides the two seamen killed, two others were also injured, he said.
Van Kessel explained that Sea Trucks Group is heavily involved in the oil and gas sector in the Delta, but declined to comment on the specific activities of the fired-on ship.
She further said that two of the company's vessels came under attack, although the navy insisted only one ship was involved.
Sea Trucks Group, which also operates in Australia and East Asia, was founded as a Nigerian firm in 1977, offering support vessels to oil majors operating in the Delta, according to its website.
Separately, explosions rocked parts of the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguri yesterday as troops engaged suspected radicals and raided homes, residents said.
The explosions, which began late Friday, occurred in three neighbourhoods notorious for attacks blamed on the Boko Haram sect, and residents fled as troops went door-to-door arresting people suspected of complicity, they said.
“Last night, there were explosions in Gwange area which went on till the late hours and today the explosions continued in Kalari and Budum neighbourhoods,” Modu Ari, a Budum resident, told AFP by phone from the city.
“Soldiers moved from house to house arresting people, forcing residents to flee their homes to escape arrest,” said Ari, who had left his house with his family yesterday.
Ali Faltaye, a resident of Kalari, said troops battled suspected sect members in the area, sending residents fleeing to avoid being caught up in the fighting or arrested by soldiers.
“Since morning loud explosions have been going on in the area and soldiers have been breaking into homes making arrests”, Faltaye said.
Military and police authorities were not available for comment.
Troops from Nigeria's Joint Task Force who were deployed in the city two years ago to combat Boko Haram have been accused of burning homes and committing rights violations against residents whom they accuse of complicity with Boko Haram whenever there is an attack blamed on the sect.
The soldiers have denied such accusations.
Boko Haram has killed hundreds in an insurgency that has been focused in Nigeria's mainly Muslim north, with attacks also occurring in the country's religiously and ethnically divided center.
Gunmen kill two sailors, kidnap four foreigners in Nigeria
