The contractor said the vessel, H.D. Blue Ocean, was attacked at about 2:30 p.m. (1330 GMT) at the entrance of the Sambreiro River in the delta, a vast network of mangrove creeks which is home to Africa's biggest oil industry.

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Nigerian military officials were not immediately able to confirm the attack. The nationalities of the foreigners on board were not immediately known.

Insecurity in the Niger Delta surged in early 2006 when militants, who say they are fighting for more local control of the impoverished region's oil wealth, started blowing up oil pipelines and kidnapping foreign workers.

Criminal gangs have taken advantage of the breakdown in law and order and the instability has become as much about control of a lucrative trade in stolen oil and abductions for ransom as about political struggle.

Gunmen attacked a vessel operated by the local unit of Italian energy group Eni close to Sambreiro early on Sunday, killing one crew member and abducting another for ransom, the army said.

That attack came barely three weeks after gunmen hijacked a supply vessel belonging to oil services company West Africa Offshore with eight Nigerian crew members as it returned from the Agbami offshore field operated by U.S. firm Chevron

 

 

 

 

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