MANILA, 22 January 2007 — The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) yesterday said the six Filipinos who were kidnapped in Nigeria on Saturday are crewmembers of a German-operated cargo ship, and that they have not been harmed.

Earlier reports said the victims worked for an oil company in Nigeria’s volatile, oil-rich southern region.

But Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr., head of the DFA’s office of migrant workers’ affairs, said a report from the Philippine Embassy in Nigeria yesterday said it has turned out that all the victims were seamen who were seized by gunmen from their ship.

“The Filipinos are not oil workers in Nigeria but crew members of a ship passing through the area,” said Conejos.

Department spokesman Eduardo Malaya said the Philippine Ambassador in Abuja, Masaranga Umpa, has also sent two embassy officials to Warri — where the victims were reportedly taken after they were captured in the Upper Niger Delta — to assist Nigerian government officials in talks to secure the release of the victims.

Malaya said the initial information from the embassy said the Filipinos were kidnapped while working on the Baco Liner in Chanomi Creek in Warri.

The liner is said to be based in Duisburg, which runs between Europe and several ports across West Africa.

Malaya said the DFA is trying to locate the ship owners, who are believed to have their headquarters in the United Arab Emirates.

“We have asked our embassy in Abu Dhabi to help us get in touch with the ship owner and the DFA is now in the process of getting in touch with the Filipinos’ local manning agency here in the Philippines,” Malaya told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Malaya said the six were taken hostage by the group called Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which is asking for the release of a prisoner held under the custody of the Niger federal government.

But the Agence France-Presse wire agency quoted MEND as saying that the Filipinos had been taken by members of a local community.

“They (the hostages) were taken by a community in that vicinity.

The community plans to explain their reason for this abduction today,” a spokesman for MEND told the wire agency in an e-mail message.

Military and oil industry sources said on yesterday that a Nigerian seaman was also among the hostages.

The demands are the same as those made by another militant group which is holding three foreign oil workers hostage since Dec. 7 and whose attacks last February hit oil production.

There has been a sharp rise in oil worker kidnapping and attacks on oil installations since the beginning of 2006.

Last year alone, more than 60 foreigners, mostly oil workers, were kidnapped, and dozens of Nigerians were killed by militants and bandits.

Some attacks have been perpetrated by separatist groups seeking more revenue and greater self-determination for the people of the Niger delta region, others by criminal gangs out to make ransom money. (With reports from Inquirer News Service & agencies)