PORT HARCOURT (Nigeria): Armed men kidnapped a three-year-old British girl in Nigeria on Thursday, police and witnesses said, heightening a foreign hostage crisis in the country's main oil-producing zone.

Police said Margaret Hill, whose father is a British expatriate resident and whose mother is Nigerian, was snatched by at gunpoint by five men in Port Harcourt in the southern Rivers state as she was being dropped off for school.

“They blocked the Isuzu Jeep where the girl was and tried to open the doors but they were locked,” said witness Ngelebari Meenam.

“Three of the kidnappers who were armed with automatic weapons now smashed the window glass of the car and dragged the girl out and left without shooting a gun.” Local police said that the kidnappers had telephoned her father, Michael Hill, to say she was “in safe hands.” They said they were unaware if the gunmen had demanded a ransom.

A federal police spokesman, Haz Iwendi, said that the British girl was seized at 7:15 am (0615 GMT). In Britain, a Foreign Office spokesman confirmed the abduction.—AFP