(AP) _ Troops attacked and overran a Nigerian oil facility Thursday where gunmen were holding some two dozen workers and soldiers hostage, leaving a dozen of the gunmen dead, the military said.
� The attack came after midnight at the flowstation run by Italian energy giant Eni SpA in southern Nigeria, said Male Ochaguwuba, a military spokesman. He said 12 of the gunmen who seized the facility on Sunday had been killed, but he had no details on military casualties.
� Officials of Eni subsidiary Agip weren’t immediately reachable for comment.
� The seizure of the Eni-run facility, guarded by Nigerian troops, and the military’s counterattack threatened a fuller outbreak of violence in the region where various criminal and militant gangs roam the creeks and swamps in speedboats.
� Militants seeking to pressure the federal government to dispense more funds to their region, which remains deeply impoverished, generally sabotage oil installations and rarely launch full assaults on the military.
� The military, meanwhile, patrols the same creeks but hasn’t yet sent a large attack force in to clear the militants out despite 18 months of rising violence in the region where all the crude is pumped in Africa’s biggest producer.
� Past military campaigns in the Niger Delta have left villages burned to the ground and sent civilians fleeing. Those were sparked by killing of troops and were widely viewed as reprisal raids that human rights groups criticized.
� No major militant group took credit for the seizure of the Eni oil-pipeline intersection center in Bayelsa state. It had been seized after earlier battles between government troops and fighters in the region left several of the fighters dead.
� New President Umaru Yar’Adua has moved to calm the region since his May 29 inauguration, when he declared the crisis a major national priority. A top militant leader was released from jail and the government says it’s going to convene a summit of federal, local and traditional leaders aimed at a long-term solution.
� Militants have said they would hold off on attacks to allow Yar’Adua’s government space to plan, but they said the rampant kidnapping of foreigners would likely persist since it’s now a simply criminal issue that has been fueled by the payment of ransoms.
� Nigeria is Africa’s biggest producer of crude and the third-biggest overseas supplier of oil to the United States. The militants’ increased activities since December 2005 have cut about a quarter of Nigeria’s daily production, helping send oil prices soaring around the world.
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