At least 11 people were killed when militants engaged Nigerian troops in a fierce gun battle in the restive Niger Delta, police and military officials said on Tuesday.
The incident occurred on Sunday night around Brass creek at Ekeremor in southern Bayelsa State when members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) accompanying a Shell boat was attacked by the militants, they said.
”Ten militants were shot dead by the troops while a JTF member was killed,” Bayelsa police commissioner Hafiz Ringim told Agence France-Presse by telephone from Yenagoa.
JTF spokesperson Major Said Hammed said ”there were casualties on the side of the militants”, but declined to confirm if any soldier was killed.
”All I can say for now is that some of our officers were injured,” he added.
He said the troops were in the convoy of a Shell boat that was conveying materials to its Brass facility when it was attacked at Ekeremor by the Ijaw militants. Shell had earlier confirmed the incident in a statement on Monday.
”Shell has received reports of a clash between soldiers of the JTF and some militants around the Brass Creek last [Sunday] night, resulting in a number of injuries and casualties,” the Anglo-Dutch oil group said.
”There are indications that an SPDC [Shell Petroleum Development Corporation] staff [member] who had been taken hostage in the Letugbene area of Bayelsa State may have been affected in the incident,” it said, without giving details.
Local press reports said 12 people — 10 militants, a Shell worker and a soldier — were killed during the shootout.
Hammed said Nigerian troops will continue to patrol the Niger Delta waterways to protect oil facilities and personnel following a wave of kidnappings in recent months.
At least 40 foreign oil workers have been kidnapped since January, with about 15 abducted in the past two weeks. Ten of them have been released while five — an American, a Briton, a German, an Irishman and a Lebanese construction worker — are still in captivity.
Nigerian security forces have launched an aggressive manhunt for the kidnappers following a directive by President Olusegun Obasanjo to rid the region of separatist fighters seeking local control of the country’s massive oil wealth.
Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer, is the world’s sixth-biggest crude exporter with 2,6-million barrels per day, but 20% of that figure is currently lost to unrest in the region.
The Niger Delta is home to Nigeria’s multibillion-dollar oil and gas resources, but poverty in the region is pervasive with majority of its inhabitants living on less than $1 per day. — Sapa-AFP