LAGOS: Nigerian security forces stormed the hideout of the kidnappers of a Turkish national in oil-rich Rivers State and killed 14 of them in a shootout, police said yesterday.
“The hoodlums were shot dead during a gunbattle with the security agents in their camp in Kaani community in Ogoni land,” state police spokesman Ben Ugwuegbulam told AFP of the incident on Friday.
He said members of the gang who abducted a Turkish construction worker last month had opened fire upon seeing the security agents in their camp.
“The security operatives returned with a superior firepower and in the process shot dead six of the kidnappers instantly, while eight others with gunshot wounds died on the way to the hospital,” the police spokesman said.
He added that two other suspects were assisting the police in their investigation.
Ugwuegbulam said the Turkish national had earlier been released unhurt by his captors after they collected ransom money.
“The security team recovered some arms and ammunition as well as cash in the camp,” he said.
“Six AK-47 rifles, 444 rounds of ammunition, 17 magazines... as well as the sum of 98,900 naira (620 dollars) were found in the camp,” he said.
The police spokesman could not however say if the recovered money was part of the ransom.
He said the gang was also notorious for carrying out a wave of robberies and attacks on security agents in the state in recent months.
“The police and other security agents will intensify efforts to rid the state of undesirable elements, especially those harassing residents and kidnapping prominent people, including foreigners,” he said.
Scores of foreign workers have been kidnapped for ransom in the Niger Delta, which is located partly in Rivers State — although a 2009 amnesty deal for oil militants had led to a sharp decline in unrest there in recent months.
But sporadic incidents continue despite the amnesty. Attacks have been blamed on criminal gangs seeking ransom or crude oil to sell on the black market as well as militants claiming to be fighting for a greater share of oil revenue for the local population.
The Niger Delta, with its massive oil and gas reserves, remains a deeply impoverished and badly polluted region.
It has also seen a wave of pirate attacks in recent months.
On Oct. 15, gunmen attacked a ship off Nigeria operated by French firm Bourbon in the region and kidnapped seven foreign sailors.
The abducted sailors — six Russian and one Estonian — were released this week, the company said.
In a report earlier this year, the International Maritime Bureau said the Gulf of Guinea — where the Niger River discharges into the Atlantic through a massive delta — was emerging as a new piracy hub, with heavily armed gangs carrying out increasingly violent attacks in which crude theft was often the goal.
Security forces kill 14 kidnappers in Nigeria
Security forces kill 14 kidnappers in Nigeria
Russia slams Western peacekeeping plan for Ukraine
- “The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Zakharova
- She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive“
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday slammed a plan for European peacekeepers to be deployed to Ukraine as “dangerous” and dubbed Kyiv and its allies an “axis of war,” dousing hopes the plan could be a step toward ending the almost four-year-war.
US President Donald Trump has been pushing the warring sides to strike a deal to halt the conflict, running shuttle diplomacy between Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and Russia’s Vladimir Putin in a bid to get an agreement across the line.
An initial 28-point plan which largely adhered to Moscow’s demands was criticized by Kyiv and Europe, and now Russia has slammed the attempts to beef-up protections for Ukraine should an elusive deal be reached.
Ukraine’s allies said they had agreed key security guarantees for Kyiv at a summit in Paris earlier this week, including a peacekeeping force.
But in its first comments since the summit, Moscow said the statements were far away from anything the Kremlin could accept to end its assault.
“The new militarist declarations of the so-called Coalition of the Willing and the Kyiv regime together form a genuine ‘axis of war’,” Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement.
She called the plans drafted by Kyiv’s allies “dangerous” and “destructive.”
The remarks come as Russian strikes plunged hundreds of thousands in Ukraine into darkness, leaving families without heat in below-freezing temperatures — attacks that Zelensky said showed Russia was still set on war.
- ‘Legitimate military targets’ -
European leaders and US envoys announced earlier this week that post-war guarantees for Ukraine would include a US-led monitoring mechanism and a European multinational force to be deployed when the fighting stops.
But Moscow has repeatedly warned that it would not accept any NATO members sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine.
“All such units and facilities will be considered legitimate military targets for the Russian Armed Forces,” Zakharova said Thursday, repeating a threat previously uttered by Putin.
Zelensky also said Thursday that a bilateral agreement between Kyiv and Washington for US security guarantees was “essentially ready for finalization at the highest level with the President of the United States” following talks between envoys in Paris this week.
Kyiv says legally-binding assurances that its allies would come to its defense are essential to convince Russia not to re-attack if a ceasefire is reached.
But specific details on the guarantees, the European force, and how it would engage have not been made public.
Zelensky said earlier this week he was yet to receive an “unequivocal” answer of what they would do if Russia does attack again after a deal.
Zelensky has also said that the most difficult questions in any settlement — territorial control of the eastern Donbas region and the fate of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — were still unresolved.
- Russian strikes cut heating -
Ukraine was meanwhile scrambling to restore heating and water to hundreds of thousands of households after a new barrage targeted energy facilities in its Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
“This is truly a national level emergency,” Borys Filatov, mayor of Dnipropetrovsk’s capital Dnipro, said on Telegram.
He announced power was “gradually returning to the hospitals” after the blackouts forced them to run on generators. The city authorities also extended school holidays for children.
About 600,000 households in the region remained cut off from power in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukrainian energy company DTEK said.
In a post on social media, Zelensky said the attacks “clearly don’t indicate that Moscow is reconsidering its priorities.”
In addition to the unrelenting pummelling of Dnipropetrovsk, Russia pressed on with its ground assault on the region, claiming to have taken another village there.
It is not one of the five Ukrainian regions that Moscow claims to have annexed.
