By Austin Ekeinde
Port Harcourt, Nigeria - Armed militants kidnapped five Koreans and killed 10 security force members in an attack on a small natural gas plant in Nigeria's southern delta on Wednesday, authorities and security sources said.
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 on the plant operated by Royal Dutch Shell comes three days after eight foreign oil workers were released by a different group of kidnappers, and is the latest sign of rising militancy in Africa's top oil 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 Nigeria's far south.
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 exports to a complete halt.
Poverty, lawlessness, corruption and struggles for control of a lucrative oil smuggling business fuel unrest in the delta, a maze of mangrove-lined creeks the size of England.
Energy-hungry South Korea has growing interests in Nigeria, the world's eighth largest oil exporter, and earlier this year won exploration rights in return for billions of dollars of investment in Nigerian infrastructure.
South Korea's KBS TV showed the son of one of the kidnapped workers appealing for his father's return.
"I want Dad to come back so we can go fishing," Park Myong-il, son of Park Chang-am, said as his mother sitting next to him burst into tears.
In Wednesday's pre-dawn raid, Mend said it captured and burnt a houseboat used by army and police assigned to protect the Cawthorne Channel natural gas plant, and several security forces were killed in a 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 security source said nine navy staff and a policeman were killed. Military spokesmen confirmed four dead.
Mend said one of its fighters was killed and two injured.
In Seoul, a Foreign Ministry official said three of the kidnapped South Koreans worked for Daewoo Engineering and Construction Co and the other two were with Korea Gas Corp.
The attack forced Shell to shut about 75 million cubic feet per day of natural gas production, but had no impact on oil flows from the area, industry sources said.
The gas from Cawthorne Channel is normally sent to the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas export plant at Bonny, which processes 3,5 billion cubic feet of gas per day.
An NLNG spokesperson said the supply cut had no impact on its operations, and shipping sources said gas exports were normal.
- Additional reporting by Tom Ashby in Lagos, Estelle Shirbon in Abuja, Jon Herskovitz and Park Sung-woo in Seoul