French Man Kidnapped In Katsina

Gunmen invaded Rimi town in Katsina State on Wednesday night where they abducted a French construction worker, attacked a police station and killed two persons. The gunmen, numbering about 30, drove into Rimi which is about 20 kilometres north of Katsina in three cars, firing shots.

They appeared to have split into two groups, with one targeting the home of the Frenchman, Mr. Frances Colump, who works for the French renewable energy firm Vergnet.

Vergnet is a French firm specialising in wind power turbines, and is currently building Nigeria’s first wind farm based in Katsina State.

The other team attacked a local police station where they freed detainees and detonated an explosive that destroyed the building.

At the home of Mr. Colump, the gunmen killed local guard Abubakar Salele as well as another man who came to charge his phone, residents told a Daily Trust correspondent who visited the town yesterday. A mobile policeman was also injured.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

State police commissioner, Abdullahi Magaji said “the attackers were kidnappers not Boko Haram members as widely speculated; they purposely came to kidnap Mr. Frances and they have succeeded.”

Magaji said they killed two people and injured a mobile policeman attached to the kidnapped Frenchman during the operation. He said the attack on Rimi Police Divisional Office was only to distract police attention.

The French Foreign Ministry said it could not immediately confirm the kidnapping but was making checks. A Paris-based Vergnet executive confirmed the kidnapping, according to Reuters news agency.

Police commissioner Magaji said the attackers threw a gas cylinder at the police station and fired a gunshot at it on their way out of the town, hence the building went in flames and destroyed properties inside.

“Although they have succeeded in attacking our formation but they have not taken anything from our division; all our arms are intact nothing is missing. Police had recovered one AK47 belonging to the kidnappers,” he said.

A Daily Trust reporter who visited Rimi town hours after the attack, saw charred guns apparently destroyed by the attackers.

The commissioner also said security personnel had been dispatched to find the kidnappers. “I can assure you I will arrest the kidnappers within two days,” he added.

A witness, Muhammad Nura, told Daily Trust in Rimi town that the attackers might have divided themselves into two groups.

“I could hear sounds of gun shots from two directions, the direction of the white man’s residence and that of the Police Divisional office as well,” he said.

“We were terrified by incessant gunshots; it was like we are in the battlefield. We thought we would all be killed by the attackers because we have never experienced such incidence in this town in the past,” he added.

Rimi local government chairman Nasiru Ala told Daily Trust that local guard Salele died on the spot while his visitor Rabe Dan-Unguwa died on way to the hospital.

The mobile policeman attached to the kidnapped Frenchman was said to be shot in the stomach and leg. He was first taken to the General Hospital, Katsina before being transferred to Malam Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital in Kano

Blood stains and bullet holes were seen all over at the residence of the kidnapped Frenchman.

Our reporter also observed that the house was ransacked by the kidnappers.

Security was beefed up in the town. The police commissioner, director of State Security Service and the Army commandant were at the scene of the attack when Daily Trust visited yesterday.

Northern Nigeria has seen two previous abductions of foreigners since last year.

A Briton and an Italian were abducted in May last year in Kebbi State and their captors killed them during a British-Nigerian rescue mission in Sokoto in March this year.

A German construction worker kidnapped near Kano in January was killed when security forces raided a suspected Boko Haram hideout in Kano on May 31 this year.

In the Niger Delta, where kidnapping of foreigners happened many times over since 2006, there were two such abductions this week alone.