Nigerian gunmen kidnap 3-year-old in oil city

PORT HARCOURT, Nigeria, July 5 (Reuters) Gunmen kidnapped a three-year-old daughter of an expatriate in the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, a police spokeswoman said today.

Ireju Barasua said the child, whom she named as Margaret Hill, was snatched from the car in which she was being driven to school as it was stuck in traffic. Barasua did not have any further details.

Kidnappings for ransom are very common in Port Harcourt, located in the oil-producing Niger Delta in southern Nigeria, although abductions of children are rare.

Diplomatic sources in the capital Abuja said initial reports suggested the child has a British father and Nigerian mother, although this was not confirmed. British officials said they were looking into the reports but nothing was certain.

In some past abductions, details given by Nigerian authorities early on have later turned out to be inaccurate.

About 200 adult expatriates have been kidnapped in the Niger Delta since the start of 2006 and 15 are still being held by various armed groups. Most abductions are for ransom although a few have been politically motivated.

Several armed groups in the Niger Delta are campaigning for ''resource control'' or the right of impoverished local communities to gain greater control over oil revenues from their lands. These groups have sometimes kidnapped oil workers in the name of the struggle for resource control.

But abductions have become more and more frequent as copy-cat kidnappers have taken advantage of the breakdown of law and order in the delta to extort hefty ransoms.

Authorities frequently bemoan the ''commercialisation'' of kidnappings but local human rights activists say some corrupt politicians get a cut of the profits.

When the current wave of kidnappings started, in early 2006, most people targeted were oil workers but armed groups have become more and more indiscriminate, seizing workers from the construction and telecom industries as well as small business owners.

Today's child abduction is the third this year, according to local media.

Nigerian newspapers reported last month that the three-year-old child of a member of the Rivers state House of Assembly was kidnapped and handed back to the family unharmed in exchange for money. There were also reports earlier in the year of another child abduction for ransom.

REUTERS AGL ND1612