Gun battles erupted for the fourth day running on Monday in the southern Nigerian city of Warri as ethnic violence continued to rock the Niger Delta and to worry the world oil market.
Fighting has been raging in Warri since Friday, when raiding between the rival Itsekiri and Ijaw ethnic groups in the delta swamps spilled over into the divided town, a centre for the oil industry, witnesses said.
”Fighting is still going on. Two policemen were critically injured and are receiving treatment. A number of civilians are also injured,” Nigeria’s chief police spokesperson, Chris Olakpe, said.
Another police officer who asked not to be named said that at least 10 people had been killed overnight in clashes between heavily armed ethnic militias and security forces struggling to enforce a curfew.
”We learned 10 people were killed around the Odion Road Market, Ekurede and Ugbuwangue areas of the city yesterday. Up to 20 houses
were burned in these places. Many vehicles were damaged,” he said.
”People are fleeing Warri to the neighbouring towns of Sapele and Ughelli,” he added.
Witnesses reported by telephone from the city that firing had continued on Monday afternoon and that hundreds of people had spilled out into the streets to seek shelter from the fighting.
”I saw 18 to 25 bodies yesterday,” said an Itsekiri resident of the frontline Ekurede-Itsekiri district of the city, who asked not to be identified. ”I can hear gunfire now. The place is little less than hell.”
An AFP tally of witness reports and official casualty figures brings the total number of dead since the latest round of fighting erupted on Friday to about 30, with many more injured or left homeless.
A spokesperson for the Nigerian Red Cross, Umo Okon, said that 25 injured people and four with serious burns were being treated in Warri’s hospitals and that volunteers were caring for displaced families.
In London, Paul Spedding, an oil analyst for investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, said that the latest violence in the Niger Delta was adding to market worries about attacks on Iraqi oil facilities.
”Nigeria remains a threat. The worrying area is an oil-producing area so it could result in oil being taken off the market,” he said, warning of increased pressure on oil prices.
Since March, Warri has been at the centre of a conflict between heavily armed gangs from the Itsekiri ethnic group and the neighbouring Ijaws, who are vying for supremacy in the oil-rich coastal swamps west of the city.
Fighting erupted again last week after a relative lull in a conflict that has seen scores killed, driven at least 8 000 people from their homes and forced multinational oil companies to abandon many of their wells.
Several international oil giants and oilfield service companies have offices and workshops in Warri, a port city 320km east of Nigeria’s commercial centre Lagos.
A spokesperson for the Anglo-Dutch giant Shell said that the new fighting had not yet affected production, which has already been severely cut back in the region, but the companies were concerned for their office workers.
”Movement of staff to the offices is restricted because of the crisis. Everybody is careful not to be caught in the crossfire,” he said.
A spokesperson for the United States major ChevronTexaco said: ”Apart from the flow stations shut since March, the new crisis has not affected production. As for our workers in Warri, we will evacuate them when the need arises.”
Sheddy Ozoene, spokesperson for Delta State Governor James Ibori, said that his boss had cut short a holiday and was returning to calm the situation.
”He is worried about escalation of conflict and the bloodshed taking place. He is appealing to the youths to lay down their arms,” Ozoene said.
Fighting in March forced Shell, ChevronTexaco and France’s Total to evacuate most of their facilities in the western Delta area, slashing Nigerian production by 40%.
Exports have resumed from the region’s two major oil terminals, and much of the shortfall has been made up by production increases
elsewhere, but many wells in the swamps west of Warri are still lying abandoned.
The trouble has coincided with a wave of lawlessness, with foreign oil workers being kidnapped for ransom and with an increase in crude oil being stolen from pipelines and sold illegally on the international market. — Sapa-AFP
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