{An Australian mining company says seven of its workers who were kidnapped in south-eastern Nigeria last week have been freed.}<\/p>\n
McMahon Holdings said three Australian workers were released along with a South African national, a New Zealander, and two Nigerians.<\/p>\n
Five of the men are injured, two of them seriously, the company said.<\/p>\n
The men were kidnapped when their convoy of cars was ambushed by gunmen near the city of Calabar on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Their Nigerian driver was killed in the attack.<\/p>\n
Kidnap-for-ransom is a longstanding issue in southern Nigeria, where gangs target expatriate workers.<\/p>\n
The head of McMahon Holdings, Sy van Dyk, said the men had been through a traumatic experience, Australian broadcaster ABC reported.<\/p>\n
“We have mobilised medical and other support teams in Nigeria to provide immediate support,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I also thank the men’s families for working so closely with the company during what has been an extremely difficult time for them as well.”<\/p>\n
It is still not clear how the company or the Nigerian authorities managed to secure their release.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{An Australian mining company says seven of its workers who were kidnapped in south-eastern Nigeria last week have been freed.} McMahon Holdings said three Australian workers were released along with a South African national, a New Zealander, and two Nigerians. Five of the men are injured, two of them seriously, the company said. The men […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-26395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26395"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=26395"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=26395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}