Belarusian woman kidnapped in Nigeria

Gunmen kidnapped a Belarusian woman in Nigeria's oil-rich southern region, police and Belarusian officials said Sunday.

She was abducted Saturday night as she returned home from working as a caterer for a company that supplies food to oil workers, police spokeswoman Irejua Barasua said. The woman is the 29th person to be seized in Nigeria's Delta region this week; all but one were foreigners.

"The woman and her driver were taken from outside her house," Barasua said. "The driver was later left by the side of the road."

Barasua previously identified the woman as Russian, but the Belarusian Foreign Ministry confirmed she was Belarusian. The ministry said that Belarus would ask Russia for help because it has no embassy in Nigeria.

An official at the Russian Embassy in Lagos, Viktor Goncharov, said by telephone that nobody claiming to have kidnapped the woman has contacted her husband or the company she works for, he said.

She is about 45 and married to a Nigerian who operates a private medical clinic. They have four children, Goncharov said.

Saturday's kidnapping brings the total number of foreign workers seized so far this year in Nigeria to 95.

A Filipino woman was reported to be the first woman to be kidnapped earlier this year, although authorities later discovered that she took a flight to the Philippines a day after her apparent abduction. She said that she had managed to plead with her captors to let her go, although she had not contacted her family to explain she was safe.

Nigeria's oil reserves make it one of Africa's richest countries but it suffers from rampant corruption and violent crime and the majority of its 140 million inhabitants live in abject poverty. Ballot-box stuffing was widespread in recent nationwide elections, which the governing party claimed victory, dismissing criticism by international and domestic observers.

The oil-rich Delta region remains deeply impoverished despite being the heart of Africa's largest oil exporter. Some of the militant groups have denounced last month's elections.

But analysts say the growing number of guns in the swampy Delta region has contributed to the growth of a number of copycat kidnapping rings who have no political agenda. They only carry out abductions for cash.