At least nine people were killed in fighting between rival criminal gangs in Nigeria’s oil city of Port Harcourt, the state news agency reported on Monday.
The nine, including a woman who was hit in her car by a stray bullet, were killed in the high density Diobu district of the city where the rival gangs clashed late on Sunday, the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) quoted the local police chief as saying.
“The Divisional Police Officer in charge of Mile 1 Diobu police station … confirmed the figure in an interview,” NAN said.
The fighting, which raged until the early hours of Monday, was the latest example of violence in Nigeria’s lawless southern delta, where attacks on oil facilities, kidnapping of foreigners and gang bloodletting have increased since 2006.
Gang clashes are a common occurrence in Port Harcourt, the main city in Nigeria’s oil heartland and gunmen frequently engage in turf wars to assert their supremacy.
Two people were killed in the city when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a crowd last month, while at least four died in clashes between rival gangs in April.
Violence over the last 18 months has prompted thousands of foreign workers to flee in the Niger Delta, a maze of mangrove-lined creeks that is home of Nigeria’s oil wealth, and shut down about a third of the country’s production capacity.
Poverty and endemic corruption in government is at the root of much of the insecurity in the region, where impoverished fishing villages host Africa’s biggest oil industry.
Jul32007