Nigerian Police Rescues Lebanese Hostage
Police freed a Lebanese hostage after a shoot-out in which six of his captors were killed, a force spokesman said Sunday.
The Lebanese national was freed on Saturday from where he was being held in the creeks outside Lagos, said police spokesman Frank Mba.
"Six of the kidnappers lost their lives in the encounter," he added. Officers were still trying to find out more about them, but Mba described them as "just criminals."
The man, who has not been identified, was seized Monday by gunmen from a waterfront construction site in Lagos” up-market residential and business area, Victoria Island.
While kidnappings by gunmen are rare in Lagos, they are very common in the southern oil-rich Niger Delta where hundreds of people have been abducted over the past three years.
As a result of the unrest in the Delta region, many oil firms have moved their expatriate workers to Lagos.