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LAGOS - One foreign oil worker was killed and another seriously wounded on Wednesday when the Nigerian military launched a mission to free seven oil workers taken hostage from an offshore oil field, military sources said.
The sources said the five other hostages kidnapped earlier on Wednesday were freed in the operation, in which at least two militants were also killed.
Italy's foreign ministry said the dead hostage was British.
A spokesman for ENI , the Italian company operating the oil field, had earlier said the hostages were two Finns, a Briton, an Italian, a Filipino, a Pole and a Romanian.
"There was a rescue mission. Five hostages were rescued, one was wounded and one was killed in the cross-fire," one military source said.
He added the wounded man was receiving treatment on an oil platform.
The authorities earlier said gunmen in speed boats kidnapped the seven oil workers in a raid on an Italian oil production vessel off the Nigerian coast.
Eni closed down its 50,000 barrels-a-day Okono/Okpoho oilfield as a result of the attack, an industry source said.
- REUTERS
