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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

NIGERIA: Fighting between rival villages claims more lives in Delta

LAGOS, 26 August 2003 (IRIN) - Several people were killed at the weekend when gunmen in speed boats raided a village in Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta oil region, burning houses and firing weapons, residents and police said.

Police and local residents blamed the attack on the Ijaw village of Ekeremor in Bayelsa State on Saturday on men from two other Ijaw villages in neighbouring Delta State.

"The miscreants who I understand came from Ogbodobiri and Oboro communities killed about six people," Oliver Osuchukwu, the police commander of Bayelsa State, told IRIN.

Several Nigerian newspapers quoted residents of the affected village as saying the death toll was between 10 and 20.

Osuchukwu said the police had launched an investigation into the cause of the violence. Meanwhile, contingents of police and soldiers had been deployed in the area to ward off any further attacks.

Newspapers quoted survivors as saying the remote swamp village was attacked by youths from nearby Ogbodobiri and Oboro who were angered by the killing of three men from their own communities in Ekeremor two weeks ago. They had been suspected of involvement in pirate attacks on local boats.

Five days of violence between rival militias of the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups last week killed at least 100 people in the oil port city of Warri, a hub of oil operations in the Niger Delta.

In this case however, the violence reflected a dispute between different Ijaw communities.

Violence, sometimes between rival communities and ethnic groups or just aimed at disrupting oil multinationals' operations, is rife in Nigeria's delta region where most of the country's oil is produced.

Locals fight each other mostly over claims to shares of the region's oil wealth. Activists and community groups have accused successive Nigerian governments of colluding with oil companies to deny poor villages a share in the region's oil wealth.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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