German kidnapped in Nigeria

Unknown gunmen abducted a German working for a construction company in a north Nigeria city where a radical Islamist sect last week killed 185 people, police said, underscoring the continuing unrest in the region.
The kidnapping came as Nigeria's new top police official took command of the nation's ill-equipped and under-trained force, despite already being tarnished by allegations he allowed religious and ethnic violence that killed 1 000 people in 2001 to spiral out of control.
Violence in north Nigeria continued on Thursday with the kidnapping of the German who worked for Dantata & Sawoe Construction Company Ltd. Local police spokesperson Magaji Musa Majiya said two gunmen in a sedan abducted the man while he was at a construction site.
Telephone numbers advertised for the construction company did not work on Thursday. The German Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria's capital, declined to comment.
A spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said that authorities had heard the report and that the ministry and the embassy were working together with all resources to learn more.
Majiya said officers continue to investigate the abduction. No one claimed responsibility for the kidnapping, but it came after Boko Haram's co-ordinated attack last week in Kano that saw police stations, immigration offices and the local headquarters of the secret police bombed.
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