Update:
We are receiving reports of a car bomb having been detonated at Government House in Port Harcourt. No further information is available at this time. We will update as and when…..
A Nigerian armed group, which has claimed responsibility for bomb blasts against oil installations in the volatile Niger Delta, has said it was about to detonate two car bombs.
“Today, Saturday, December 23, 2006, operatives of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), successfully planted explosives in locations of strategic importance around the Niger Delta,” the group said in an e-mail statement to AFP here.
“These are contained in two cars which will shortly be detonated. A statement will shortly follow,” it added.
MEND on Monday bombed the properties of two oil majors — Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell and Agip, a subsidiary of Italy’s Eni — in the restive region.
On December 8 MEND claimed responsibility for kidnapping four foreign oil workers, three Italians and one Lebanese national a day earlier and warned it would launch further attacks on oil companies and personnel in the delta region in the coming days.
The group also threatened to step up both the intensity and the “ruthlessness” of its attacks on oil company targets until its political demands were met.
MEND wants more oil revenue for local people, compensation for oil spillages and the release from prison of former Bayelsa governor Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, jailed on corruption charges, separatist leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari and several lesser-known individuals held on terrorism charges.
The region has seen an upsurge in violence over the past year by separatist fighters seeking a higher share of the country’s oil wealth for the region’s 14 million ethnic Ijaw people.
This has cut back Nigeria’s normal production of 2.6 million barrels of crude per day by about 25 per cent.