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| Africa Subsaharan |
| Russian hostages escape kidnappers in Nigeria |
| 2009-02-20 |
| Two Russian oil workers who were kidnapped two months ago have escaped from their captors and been picked up by the military after a harrowing five-day ordeal, an army spokesman said Thursday. Lt. Col. Sagir Musa said the pair escaped on foot from a militant camp Sunday and were found by naval personnel on patrol early Thursday afternoon. Musa said the pair _ who had been wandering around the isolated creeks in Nigeria's oil producing region for five days _ were malnourished but unharmed. The two were seized by gunmen in speedboats during a pre-dawn raid Dec. 20 in the southern state of Akwa Ibom in Nigeria's troubled south. Hundreds of expatriate and Nigerian hostages have been taken during three years of rising violence across the southern Niger Delta region, which is the seat of Africa's biggest oil industry. Victims are normally released after a ransom is paid. Three years of militant attacks on the industry have kept the country's daily crude production about 25 percent under its estimated capacity of 2.5 million barrels per day. |
| Posted by:Fred |