More blasts rocked Baghdad on Thursday, spreading yet more carnage during what was already Iraq’s worst week for bombings since the United States invasion, and as US casualties continued to mount. For the fourth time this year a bomb exploded in bustling Tehran Square in downtown Baghdad, wounding at least 20 day labourers waiting at a spot popular for seeking work.
Nigerian separatist guerrillas released three kidnapped oil workers — two Americans and a Briton — on Monday after holding them hostage for more than a month, according to a state government spokesperson. "They’re all here. They’re all OK," the Delta State spokesperson said by telephone from his government’s local offices in Warri, an oil port 340km southeast of Lagos.
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/ 23 February 2006
It all started with a series of provocative cartoons in a Danish newspaper, but few in Nigeria are worried about that now. The fury unleashed in protests against the European press has taken on a deadly logic of its own, and no-one knows how many will be dead before it ends.
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/ 21 February 2006
Nigerian authorities hunted for nine foreign workers being held as ”human shields” by rebel fighters on Tuesday as the crisis in Africa’s biggest oil industry forced world oil prices up sharply. The nine oilmen were seized on Saturday by separatist guerrillas during an attack on the energy giant Shell’s Forcados oil terminal.
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/ 20 February 2006
Nigerian separatist guerrillas taunted the army with claims of further attacks on Monday after a weekend of violence forced energy giant Shell to slash the country’s oil exports by a fifth. There was still no news of nine foreign oil workers seized by the gang on Saturday.
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/ 30 January 2006
Nigerian insurgents released four kidnapped foreign contractors on Monday, but immediately vowed to press home a series of violent attacks against the country’s key oil and gas industries. ”We will shortly carry out greatly significant attacks,” said the militants in a statement from an e-mail account used by the hostage takers.
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/ 18 January 2006
Tension was mounting on Wednesday in the city of Warri as soldiers hunted for a heavily armed militia that has attacked oil facilities in southern Nigeria and kidnapped four foreign workers. Boat crews and human rights activists said military forces have deployed in strength on the waterways of the Niger Delta.
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/ 13 January 2006
Nigerian troops were searching on Friday for an armed gang which stormed an oil industry supply vessel and kidnapped four foreign workers, a military spokesperson said. The hostages were taken on Wednesday when around 40 gunmen in three canoes seized the boat Liberty Service in waters off the Niger Delta, 180km east of Lagos, naval Captain Obiara Medani said.
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/ 28 November 2005
Hundreds of Nigerian troops descended on Monday on the capital of the country’s biggest oil-producing region after militant youths rallied around a state governor accused of embezzling millions of dollars, the military said. The deployment marks a dramatic increase in tension in the restive Niger Delta.
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/ 21 November 2005
A Nigerian state governor who had been charged in Britain with handling more than -million in stolen government funds has skipped bail and returned home, where he enjoys immunity from prosecution, officials said on Monday. The escape will prove an embarrassment both for Nigeria’s President Olusegun Obasanjo and for Britain.