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Nigerian police promise to free kidnapped girl

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 7, 2007

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria - The mother of a British girl kidnapped in Nigeria said Friday her 3-year-old is under threat of death and living on bread and water. Police promised to free the child without resorting to force.

Hostages in Nigeria's southern oil region have died only when security forces battled kidnappers, and the regional police commissioner said security forces would not use violence to free Margaret Hill.

The mother of the girl, snatched by gunmen Thursday as the car carrying her to school was stuck in traffic, said the captors had called the family.

Oluchi Hill said the captors were threatening to kill the girl and then come after her and the girl's father, Mike Hill, who has lived in the country for years and runs a bar popular with expatriates in Port Harcourt, the country's main oil center.

More than 200 foreigners have been kidnapped since militants stepped up their activities against the oil industry in late 2005, and more than 100 expatriates have been seized this year as criminal gangs take up the practice.

There was no indication that politics played a part in the girl's seizure, the first abduction of a foreign child in the increasingly lawless oil region of Africa's biggest oil producer.

More than a dozen foreigners are currently in captivity, including five seized Wednesday from a Royal Dutch Shell oil rig.

[Last modified July 7, 2007, 00:33:51]