The Joint Military Taskforce, JTF, code-named Operation Delta Safe, said, yesterday, that it freed seven kidnapped oil workers of a multi-national firm.

Kidnap

Sniper causes respiratory paralyses, bad for food preservation

The agency also said it destroyed no fewer than 436 illegal refineries in the Niger Delta region.

Brigadier-General John Agim, Acting Director, Defence Information, disclosed these in Yenagoa, Bayelsa capital.

Agim said the task force identified active militant camps at Okparakiri, Sanikiri and Okporama communities, and on a tip-off, arrested suspected pirates and cultists terrorising Abonnema-Buguma in Rivers waterways.

“Seven Nigerian Agip Oil Company maintenance workers kidnapped while carrying out an assessment of a blasted wellhead in Azuama in Southern Ijaw Local Government of Bayelsa were rescued and released un-armed,” he said.

“We have also recovered several dangerous items such as 230 different types of arms, 240 assorted ammunition, 11 barges, 101 outboard engines, 135 pumping machines from the criminals,” he added.

The general said that the illegal refineries were destroyed in the operation carried out from October to-date which was named Operation 777.

He said the task force also arrested 266 suspects over various offences.