Several people were injured and many houses and vehicles were destroyed in two days of fighting between two rival cult gangs in southern Nigeria’s volatile Ogoniland, police said Tuesday.
Riot police were brought in to break up the violence which erupted Sunday between the Deewell and Deebam gangs in Bane in the Khana local government area, Rivers state police spokeswoman Ireju Barasua told AFP.
“Several people were injured while vehicles and houses were razed” in the fighting which continued until Monday, she added.
Local press said at least two people were feared killed.
Bane is the home town of the late environmental campaigner and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed along with eight other Ogoni activists by the military in November 1995 over a trumped up charge of killing four fellow Ogoni chiefs.
Oil-rich Ogoniland is a hotbed of civil unrest in the restive Niger Delta, home to Nigeria’s multi-billion-dollar oil and gas resources.
Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell, which is Nigeria’s leading producer, was forced to quit Ogoniland in 1993 because of community unrest.
Residents of Ogoni communities accuse foreign oil companies, especially Shell, of destroying their ecosystem without paying adequate compensation.