Nigeria's MEND to Hand Over South African Hostages

By Karl Maier

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Nigeria's main militant group in the Niger River delta said it freed two South Africans taken hostage by pirates last week and will release them soon.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, in an e-mailed statement late yesterday, said the South Africans were ``rescued'' from the pirates. The two were among five international oil workers kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on Sept. 9 during an attack on their vessel.

MEND said it would release the South Africans after an appeal by the wife of Henry Okah, the militant leader who used to live in South Africa and now faces trial for treason in Nigeria. Earlier, the South African Foreign Affairs Ministry said the hostages may be freed tomorrow.

The militants will place the oil workers in ``the care of the South African government representative at the earliest convenience after working out the modalities,'' MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo said in the statement.

The militants last month freed two German hostages employed by a local unit of the Mannheim-based construction company Bilfinger Berger AG after they were abducted by kidnappers.

MEND said today it sabotaged an oil pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell Plc's unit in the West African nation. It said it used explosives to destroy the pipeline at Bakana Front in the Degema local government area in Rivers state. The attack occurred at 10:10 p.m. yesterday, Gbomo said.

The militants said yesterday they destroyed a Shell flow station in a third day of attacks against oil installations.

`Oil War'

The attacks started when Nigerian troops and militants clashed in the Elem-Tombia district south of Port Harcourt. The militants, saying the military began an air and marine offensive against their positions, declared an ``oil war'' targeting installations in the region that produces nearly all of Nigeria's oil.

Although Nigeria has Africa's biggest hydrocarbon reserves, with more than 30 billion barrels of crude and 187 trillion cubic feet of gas, it has dropped behind Angola as the continent's top oil exporter because of the violence.

The West African country is the fifth-biggest source of U.S. oil imports.

To contact the reporter on this story: Karl Maier in Rome at kmaier2@bloomberg.net