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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

NIGERIA: Seven killed as police clash with separatists

LAGOS, 31 March 2003 (IRIN) - At least seven members of a group campaigning for an independent Biafra were killed on Saturday in southeast Nigeria during a confrontation with the police, police and witnesses said.

More than 5,000 members of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB) were travelling in a convoy of about 130 cars and buses to a rally when they were confronted by heavily armed police at Umololo village in Imo State. "There was an argument and then a fight and the police shot dead seven people," Ray Onyeukwu, who said he witnessed the incident, told IRIN.

The chief of police in Imo State, Ben Eghomone, confirmed the death of the seven and told reporters they had attempted to disarm the police. "Will the police stand and wait to be disarmed?" he said.

But MASSOB said in a statement on Monday the police had opened fire unprovoked on their convoy of vehicles, killing 50 members. The group's leader, Ralph Uwazuruike, and 300 other members were subsequently arrested and taken into custody, the statement said.

Uwazuruike founded MASSOB in 1999 with the aim of reviving the 1967 secession of southeastern Nigeria - dominated by the Ibo ethnic group - as Biafra, which resulted in the three years of civil war. More than one million people died in the war, mostly from starvation.

Emeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, who as a colonel in the Nigerian army declared Biafra, is running for the presidency on April 19 as the candidate of the All Progressive Grand Alliance party. After Biafra's defeat in 1970, Ojukwu fled into exile in Ivory Coast, but returned in 1981 after he was
granted a state pardon.

While Ibo nationalism and complaints of unfair treatment by successive regimes since the end of the civil war feature prominently in his campaign, Ojukwu has distanced himself from Uwazuruike's movement, which has frequent run-ins with the authorities.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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