The attack Saturday night happened in Jama're, a town in a rural portion of Bauchi state. There, the gunmen first attacked a local prison, burning two police trucks, Bauchi state police spokesman Hassan Muhammed told The Associated Press.

 

The gunmen then targeted a worker's camp for a construction company called Setraco, which is in the area building a road, Muhammed said. The gunmen shot dead a guard at the camp before kidnapping the foreign workers, the spokesman said.

 

Adamu Aliyu, the chairman of the local government area that encompasses Jama're, identified those kidnapped as one British citizen, one Greek, one Italian and four Lebanese.

 

The Italian news agency ANSA later said authorities confirmed an Italian had been kidnapped in the attack. It quoted Foreign Minister Giulio Terzi saying the safety of the hostage must be given “absolute priority.”

 

The Foreign Office of both Britain and Greece said Sunday they were looking into the kidnappings.

 

Foreigners, long abducted by militant groups and criminal gangs for ransom in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, have become increasingly targeted in Nigeria's north as the violence has grown. However, abductions of foreigners in the north have seen hostages regularly killed.

 

In May, gunmen in Kaduna state shot and killed a Lebanese and a Nigerian construction worker, while kidnapping another Lebanese employee. Later that month, kidnappers shot a German hostage dead during a rescue operation. Gunmen who authorities say have links to Boko Haram also kidnapped an Italian and a British man last year in northern Kebbi State who were later killed during a rescue operation by Nigerian soldiers backed up by British special forces. The sect later denied taking part in that abduction, which left Italian authorities angry that the nation was not consulted before the failed rescue attempt.

 

Chinese construction workers also have been killed by gunmen around Maiduguri, the northeastern city in Nigeria where Boko Haram first began.

< Prev		Next >