Fifty militants on Sunday fought a gunbattle with Nigerian security forces and torched police headquarters in Port Harcourt in the oil-producing Niger Delta to free one of their leaders.
The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said fighters armed with machine guns, grenades and assault rifles attacked troops and police who fought back with helicopter gunships and an armoured personnel carrier.
“We lost none of our fighters in the encounter which saw the destruction of the State Investigation and Intelligence Bureau and the Rivers state police headquarters,” MEND said in a statement e-mailed to journalists.
The group said 50 of its fighters were involved.
The gunfight took place in the densely populated old part of Port Harcourt, near the waterfront, where residents said they saw the militants torch the central police station and at least 10 police vehicles. Police said at least one person was killed.
“Our fighters have since retreated to the creeks with our prize,” MEND said, referring to Sobomabo George, one of its leaders who had been captured earlier in the day.
The MEND, which says it is fighting for the impoverished people of the delta to gain control of the region’s oil wealth, was responsible for a wave of attacks last February that forced the closure of a fifth of Nigeria’s oil production capacity.
The group is holding three foreign oil workers hostage in the remote creeks of the delta, where anarchy is rising. A total of 38 foreign hostages are being held by different armed groups.
The delta accounts for all oil production from Nigeria, the world’s eighth biggest exporter.
ANARCHY
The armed forces are unable to control the delta’s maze of mangrove-lined creeks and major cities such as Port Harcourt and Warri have also descended into anarchy.
“We were in church when we heard shooting everywhere,” said one Port Harcourt resident, who did not wish to be named.
“We saw people running helter-skelter. We can still hear gunshots now. We saw men in military uniform and police and some people running away,” he said.
Security sources said another fight broke out between militants and security forces at Nembe, in neighbouring Bayelsa state, and that the navy had dispatched two extra boats to the area to support its personnel there.
The commander of the joint army and navy force responsible for security in the area said he had no information about the incident.
Poverty fuels crime and militancy in the delta’s neglected towns and villages, where people living without electricity or clean water feel cheated out of the oil wealth being pumped from their lands.
Violence surged in 2006 and it has worsened since the start of 2007.
A Belgian man working for a building materials company died of gunshot wounds on Saturday evening in Warri, in the western delta, after two gunmen ambushed him, police said on Sunday.
Police arrested his Nigerian girlfriend and driver on suspicion they hired the killers so they could keep the victim’s property.