Three South Koreans and eight Filipinos seized in Nigeria’s oil-rich but volatile south last week were released in exhausted but stable condition after talks with their kidnappers.
“The three senior South Korean officials of Daewoo Engineering and Construction were released upon negotiation between the insurgents and the Rivers State in Nigeria,” South Korea’s Vice Foreign Minister Kim Ho-young was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.
The eight Filipinos were released at the same time on Tuesday, he said in the South Korean newswire’s report.
Negotiations for the release of the hostages were difficult because the kidnappers were not a known group, South Korean officials told Yonhap.
The 11 men, who all worked for Daewoo, were kidnapped after a gunfight at their construction site, the Afam 6 power plant in the southern Rivers State.
It was not yet clear whether a ransom had been paid, the South Korean envoy to Nigeria, Lee Kie-dong, said in Yonhap’s dispatch.
An agreement was struck after Rivers State officials weighed demands made by the kidnappers on Tuesday, he said in the report.
The workers were exhausted but stable based on initial reports, the envoy said.
An unnamed official quoted in the report said he was not allowed to discuss the terms of the release.
“But I do want to say that they did not make direct demands to us,” he said.
The Philippines on Monday had rejected appeals to negotiate directly with the gunmen, who have not been identified.
Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos said Manila would rely on the Nigerian government to bring an end to the crisis.
The kidnapped South Koreans include Chung Tae-Young, a 52-year-old Daewoo managing director who was on a business trip to the area, and two top Daewoo officials in Nigeria, according to company spokesman Huh Hyon.
It was the third time Daewoo workers had been taken hostage in Nigeria.
The release came as southern Nigeria’s most high-profile armed group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), early Tuesday sabotaged three pipelines and vowed to keep up its attacks on oil targets.
Rich in oil reserves, the Niger Delta area has been at the centre of a long confrontation between the government, militants who claim to be fighting for a larger share of the country’s oil resources for local people, and a plethora of armed gangs out to make ransom money.
More than 150 foreign workers have been kidnapped since the start of 2006, most, but not all of them connected to the oil industry.
The vast majority have been released unharmed.