Nigerian troops freed two British oil workers on Thursday less than 24 hours after they were kidnapped for ransom in the southern Niger Delta, a military commander said.
Brigadier-General Elias Zamani, head of the military task force in the restive wetlands region, said the pair were freed without a fight. Two of the kidnappers had been arrested during an exchange of fire on Wednesday night and had indicated where the hostages were being taken.
"They have been released. We were able to free them," Zamani told Reuters. One of the hostages had been reported to be Irish but on being freed he said he was from Northern Ireland and had told the kidnappers he was Irish because he was aware of a militant threat issued against Britons earlier this month.
Kidnapping for ransom is a common occurrence in the oil-producing Niger Delta, where violence kills hundreds of people every year.
The two men, employees of Canadian oil company Pan-Ocean were snatched at 9.15 pm in a bar opposite the company's office in Warri, the largest city in Delta state.
"They came in, all guns blazing, into the bar and told everyone to get on the floor. They took us away on a bus. Then we got onto a boat and they took us to a house in the swamp," Paul Alford, one of the freed hostages, told Reuters.
He said they were guarded by a man and a woman armed with AK 47s in the swamp. "It was just a financial thing. They wanted money," Alford added.
The kidnappers demanded a ransom of 50 million naira ($385,000), a police source said.
A military escort had followed the kidnappers to a jetty in the city where a gunfight broke out in which the driver of the van died and two of the suspected kidnappers were arrested.
Troops have been deployed to Warri since ethnic violence in 2003 killed hundreds and forced Western oil companies to shut almost half of the Opec nation's 2.4 million barrels per day output.
Most of the delta's 20 million people live in extreme poverty alongside an industry that yields billions of dollars for foreign companies and the Nigerian government, which has failed to provide basic services like water and power.
Anger over this state of affairs fuels frequent armed conflicts, sabotage of oil facilities, kidnappings of oil workers and oil theft on a massive scale.
A militant ethnic group in the delta last week threatened British interests in the region after the London police arrested the governor of Bayelsa state, one of four delta states, on charges of money laundering.
However, it was not clear if this kidnapping was related to that threat, a security source said.