KHARTOUM, SUDAN — Unknown assailants kidnapped nine Chinese oil workers in southwestern Sudan, the Chinese ambassador in Khartoum said today.
The men were working Saturday when they were abducted in the southern Kordofan province, the epicenter of Sudan’s oil industry and next to Darfur where ethnic African rebels are fighting the Arab-dominated government.
“We are doing our best efforts to find them,” Chinese Ambassador to Sudan Li Chengwen told The Associated Press, adding he had no further information.
Another Chinese diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said other workers were not taken and managed to return and inform the authorities.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the kidnapping and the circumstances of their capture remain unclear.
The rebels, along with many international rights activists, accuse China of indirectly funding Khartoum’s war effort in Darfur through massive investment in Sudan’s oil industry.
China buys two-thirds of Sudan’s oil exports, and oil sales account for 70 percent of the African country’s export revenue.
Darfur rebels attacked the Chinese-run Defra oil field in Kordofan last October, kidnapped two foreign workers and gave Chinese and other oil companies a week to leave the country.
Two months later, rebels attacked an army garrison in another Chinese-run oil field in the same province.
Some 140 Chinese engineers and troops are also deployed in Darfur and were among the first reinforcements sent by the United Nations, which took over peacekeeping in the western Sudanese region in January.
The Sudanese government quickly approved the Chinese contingent, even as it vetoed contributions from other countries because they were not African — including a Scandinavian engineering corps.
