Reuters) – Nigerian troops repelled an attack on a construction site run by Korean firm Daewoo in the Niger Delta early on Tuesday, killing one of the attackers, a military commander said.
The attack took place at Mbiama, on the outskirts of the delta’s main city of Port Harcourt, where Daewoo are doing contract work for Italian oil firm Agip .
Daewoo staff including some foreigners live on the site and the military commander said they were the target of the attack.
“The gunmen came in a bus to abduct some foreigners who were in the camp at the time but my men repelled the attack,” said Lawrence Ngubane, head of the Joint Task Force responsible for security in the Niger Delta.
“We killed one of the attackers and arrested one. We also seized the bus, some weapons and ammunition,” he said.
None of the Daewoo staff was hurt or kidnapped, Ngubane said.
Abductions for ransom of foreign oil workers are extremely frequent in the Niger Delta, as are attacks on oil production facilities. About 200 expatriates have been kidnapped since the start of 2006, of whom at least 16 are still being held.
Oil output from Nigeria, the world’s eighth-biggest exporter, is down by over 20 percent because of these attacks and thousands of expatriate workers and their families have left the region since the violence intensified at the start of 2006.