Militants threaten to kill abducted British girl

Unidentified Niger Delta militants, who seized a three-year-old
British girl, Margaret Hill, in Port Harcourt on Thursday have
threatened to kill her unless her parents pay an unspecified amount of
money.

Reuters quotes her mother, Oluchi Hill, as saying that in
the latest of several phone calls with the kidnappers, one of them had
demanded money. She said the line cut off before he specified an amount.

The
kidnapped girl was grabbed from the back seat of the Jeep carrying her
to school around 7.30am after it was surrounded by masked gunmen. The
gunmen smashed a window and grabbed the toddler as the car waited at a
red light in heavy morning traffic on the busy Ada George highway while
her Nigerian driver was stabbed several times in the arm.

Speaking
by telephone from her home in Port Harcourt, Oluchi said she had been
allowed to talk to her daughter briefly. The weary mother, who cried as
she spoke, said her daughter “was crying. She said they gave her only
water. She wants to come back. He (kidnapper) said he doesn‘t care
about killing and burying the baby.”

During an earlier phone
call, the kidnappers had said they wanted to swap the girl for her
father, Mike Hill, but Oluchi Hill said they had not mentioned that
when they called again. Mike Hill is a British consultant who works in
the oil and gas industry and has lived in Port Harcourt for 10 years.
Oluchi Hill, who is Nigerian, runs Goodfellas, a popular bar located in
the relatively upscale GRA neighbourhood of the city.

Goodfellas
was attacked in August 2006 by armed men who kidnapped several
expatriates. Hill had the bullet holes in the ceiling of the bar
painted over, but business slowed after the raid.