4 foreign sailors kidnapped off Nigeria coast

Group claims kidnap of French national

LAGOS, Nigeria, Dec 24, (Agencies): Gunmen attacked a supply tug boat off the coast of Nigeria’s oil-rich southern delta, kidnapping four foreign sailors in the latest attack in the West African region that is increasingly dangerous for shippers and oil companies, officials said Monday.

The attack happened 40 nautical miles off the coast of Bayelsa state in the Niger Delta on Sunday night, as the gunmen stormed the moving vessel, the International Maritime Bureau said Monday in a warning to other shippers. The gunmen seized four workers and later fled, the pulled down the church roof, condemning many of those trapped inside the burning building, including a 7-month old boy

plaque listing the names of the members of the church who were killed has been placed above their graves. The twisted metal of the cars destroyed in the blast is still there.

“I only pray to God to give them a heart,” Ehiawaguan says, when asked about her brother’s killers. bureau said. Those remaining onboard safely guided the ship to a nearby harbor, the bureau said.

The bureau did not identify the shipper, nor the sailors. However, a separate notice to private security contractors working in Nigeria and seen by The Associated Press identified the four hostages as foreigners.

Meanwhile, Nigerian Islamist group Ansaru said on Sunday it was behind the kidnap of a French national last week, citing France’s ban on full-face veils and its support for military action in Mali.

Security experts believe Boko Haram is targeting worshippers to spark a religious conflict in a country of 160 million people split roughly equally between Christians and Muslims.

The sect has also targeted Mosques in the past and assassinated Imams who have questioned its insurgency. In the group’s stronghold in the northeast, where most of its attacks occur, Muslims are equally at threat as Christians. An image grabbed on Dec 24, from a video release by Jama-atu Ansarul Muslimina fi Biladis Sudan, the radical Islamist group known as Ansaru, reportedly shows unidentified members of the group speaking in an undisclosed place in November 2012. The radical Islamist group Ansaru on Dec 23, claimed the recent kidnapping of a French citizen in northern Nigeria, citing France’s push for military

intervention in Mali as a justification. (AFP)