Reuters) – Gunmen shot dead four policemen near the Nigerian oil city of Port Harcourt, police said on Tuesday, in the latest sign of worsening security in the oil producing Niger Delta ahead of elections next month.
The officers were returning from the rundown district of Ogbakiri on the outskirts of town where they had gone to answer a distress call when they were attacked late on Monday, a police spokeswoman said.
“We can’t say now whether the attackers were militants or robbers,” she said.
Security forces raided Ogbakiri last week and rescued a group of foreign workers who had been kidnapped by ransom seekers. At least one house was burned down and a number of suspects arrested during the raid.
A rising wave of violent attacks on oil facilities, armed robberies and kidnappings in the last year have prompted thousands of foreign workers to flee the Niger Delta, which produces all of Nigeria’s crude oil output.
Some of the groups behind the abductions have made political demands, but the line between militancy and crime is blurred.
Poverty and bad government lie at the root of the violence in the Niger Delta, where impoverished fishing settlements host multi-billion dollar oil facilities.
(Additional reporting by Tume Ahemaba in Lagos)