Pirates seize crew of French oil ship off Cameroon (Roundup)

Oct 31, 2008, 17:24 GMT

Paris - Pirates kidnapped 10 crew members on a French tug working in an offshore oil field off the West African nation of Cameroon, officials said Friday.

The pirates fled in three speedboats with their hostages - seven Frenchmen, a Cameroonian and an Tunisian, after boarding the vessel owned by the Bourbon shipping company around midnight on Thursday.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said his government would do everything it could to the obtain the release of the victims.

He said a crisis team had been set up and had already made contact with officials in Africa.

French media reports said the armed pirates had threatened to kill their hostages unless the government renegotiated the status of the Bakassi peninsula.

Nigeria had handed over the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon in August, bringing an end to a long-standing dispute over the territory.

Nigerian rebels had sought to delay the handover, which was ordered by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 2002.

The tug was carrying out maintenance work in an oilfield operated by the French petroleum concern Total near the Bakassi peninsula.