Nigerian militants attack fuel tanker: military

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigerian militants engaged soldiers in a
fierce gun battle in the southern delta in an unsuccessful
attempt to capture a fuel tanker, military officials said on
Thursday.

The militants, who are holding three foreign hostages, said
they killed at least seven soldiers, but the military said two
of their men were injured and two or three militants died in
the 45-minute firefight on Wednesday evening.

“They wanted to seize a fuel tanker, but they were
repelled,” an army spokesman said.

The militants, who are fighting for more local control over
the delta’s oil resources, had earlier described the firefight
as an attack by the army on their patrol boats in the Escravos
River area on the western side of the vast wetlands region.

It was the latest in a series of confrontations between
troops and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger
Delta, whose attacks on the oil industry have cut oil exports
from the leading OPEC nation by a fifth.

The army spokesman said the tanker was carrying fuel and
was due to berth at Warri where the state oil company has a
refinery.

Having released six hostages last week, the militants are
still holding three foreign oil workers — two Americans and
one Briton — since a series of raids on Feb 18. which forced
Royal Dutch Shell to cut 455,000 barrels a day output, or one
fifth of Nigerian output.

On Wednesday, the militants named an ethnic Ijaw activist
as mediator for talks with the government, raising hopes of a
speedy resolution to the three-month-old crisis.

It followed the removal of the head of the military in the
Niger Delta on suspicion of involvement in the theft of crude
oil, government sources said.

The army said his removal was a routine redeployment.

Both sides have accused each other of being involved in the
illicit trade, estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of
dollars every year, and diplomats say it is at the root of much
of the insecurity in the region.

The militants said they had received reports of army
patrols firing indiscriminately into Ijaw communities near the
village of Odidi.

“In the light of this, we are considering what further
actions to take against the military and Shell installations in
Forcados and Odidi,” the militants said.

Shell has already evacuated all its staff from the Forcados
region, and shut all its production from the western side of
the delta. Company officials were not available to comment.