Nigerian
army fights gunbattle with hostage-takers
By
Dave Clark
AFP
LAGOS
Petroleumworld.com
03 10 06
Nigerian troops fought a fierce gunbattle with a heavily armed
separatist guerrilla group holding three western oil workers hostage
in the Niger Delta, military and rebel spokesmen said Thursday.
A witness and an oil industry official separately told AFP that
the bodies of four government soldiers and one paramilitary policeman
killed by the gang had been flown out of the area by helicopter
after the firefight.
Army spokesman Colonel Mohammed Yusuf could not confirm any deaths
among the security forces, but said that three soldiers had been
wounded.
"Our soldiers killed some of the militants in the exchange
of fire. We've no full statistics yet, but about three or four
of them were killed," he added.
The rebels claimed that they had been attacked by the military,
but navy spokesman Captain Obiora Medani told AFP the gang had
tried to capture a barge carrying fuel and were driven off when
soldiers counter-attacked.
"Militants were trying to seize a barge carrying refined
petroleum -- perhaps to sell -- and were caught in the act. They
were repulsed," he said, adding that the attack happened
on the busy Escravos River.
Yusuf also said the battle erupted during the attemped hijacking
on the Escravos of what he called a "tanker going to berth
at Warri".
A rebel spokesman claimed that 13 government soldiers had been
killed and warned that the hostages, two Americans and a Briton,
"are endangered by such experiments carried out by the Nigerian
army."
The kidnappers, in a statement from the group's email address,
said that at 5.15pm (1645 GMT) rebel "patrols on the Escravos
River were attacked in the vicinity of Okerenkoko by four patrol
boats belonging to the Nigerian army."
Okerenkoko is an ethnic Ijaw town 30 kilometres (19 miles) west
of the port of Warri and is thought to be where a group known
as the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND)
is holding the hostages.
The rebel spokesman wrote that the hostages "are kept not
exactly at the point of confrontation, but are in that vicinity.
The military will be in a better position to confirm their reasons
for this poorly planned assault."
He said that once the firefight broke out three more army boats
arrived and joined battle with the guerrillas, who are armed with
rocket propelled grenades and belt-fed machineguns.
"There was a firefight, which lasted about 45 minutes,"
he said.
On February 18, several boatloads of MEND fighters attacked the
energy giant Shell's huge Forcados oil export terminal, fought
a gunbattle with navy troops and set fire to a tanker loading
platform.
During the attack they stormed a pipeline laying barge operated
for Shell by the US engineering firm Willbros and kidnapped nine
foreign workers.
Six have since been released, but three more -- US oilmen Cody
Oswald and Russel Spell and British security expert John Hudspith
-- are still being held while the government tries to negotiate
their release through intermediaries.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil exporter, producing 2.6 million
barrels per day, but has been forced to cut output by around 20
percent since the start of the latest round of violence.
Many among the Niger Delta's 14-million-strong Ijaw tribe believe
their region's oil wealth has been stolen by corrupt Nigerian
officials and foreign oil majors, and several militant groups
operate on the delta creeks.
In a separate incident at the other, eastern end of the delta,
protesters briefly besieged the US major ExxonMobil's Qua Iboe
export terminal to protest againsy pollution and demand jobs and
local investment, the firm said.
"The youths came in some buses and set a barricade ... Movement
of staff was restricted for some 30 minutes," a company spokesman
said.
"Representatives from an organisation called the Movement
for the Survival of Ethnic Nationalities in the Niger Delta held
a peaceful rally outside. There were no injuries or impact on
operations," he added.
Despite Nigeria having earned more than 300 billion dollars from
oil exports since 1956, three-quarters of the 130 million people
in Africa's most populous still live in grinding poverty on less
than a dollar per day.
AFP
03 09 06
Copyright
© 2006 AFP. All rights reserved.
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