Posted on 07/15/2004 12:04:17 PM PDT by TexKat
LAGOS, Nigeria - Security forces raided five villages in Nigeria's oil-rich southern delta, leaving 15 people dead and homes ransacked and burned, residents and militant leaders said Thursday.
The security forces said the raids were part of an effort to combat attacks on multinational oil operations in the Niger Delta.
Troops in speedboats with mounted machine guns raided the villages of Sunny Zion, Idegbagbene, Odiogbogbene, Opia and Ogbinbiri between Sunday and Wednesday, said Maj. Said Hamed, spokesman for the region's 3,000-strong military-police task force.
He was unable to confirm whether anyone was killed in what he described as a "cordon-and-search" operation to "fish out" gunmen accused of taking oil workers hostage for ransom and large-scale theft of crude oil.
The troops also were seeking accomplices of gunmen responsible for the April killings of two Americans — Ryne Hathaway, 42, and Denny Fowler, 47, who worked for International Building Systems, a contractor to oil giant ChevronTexaco, Hamed said.
But Bello Oboko, president of the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities militant group, said 15 people — including women and children — were shot dead or drowned while fleeing the troops.
Oboko said he saw three drowned children whose bodies were brought to Warri by survivors.
Residents "fled when they saw the soldiers setting their houses on fire," Oboko said.
Lucky Akoromo, a resident of Opia, said he was fishing for shrimp in nearby mangrove swamps Tuesday when troops surrounded his village.
"Three men who tried to run away were shot dead," he said, speaking to The Associated Press by telephone from Warri.
Akoromo watched the killings from behind mangrove trees, before escaping by paddling away in his dugout canoe, he said.
Other frightened villagers, speaking on condition of anonymity, gave similar accounts.
Nigerian troops have fought river battles with ethnic militants since a surge of political and ethnic bloodletting before Nigeria's April elections forced oil multinationals to abandon wells and shut down up to 40 percent of the country's production of 2.5 million barrels a day.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer and the world's seventh-largest exporter. It is the fifth-largest source of U.S. crude imports.
Oronto Douglas, a leading Nigerian rights activist, accused President Olusegun Obasanjo's government of condoning the use of undue military force in its "strategy of highhandedness" against residents of the delta, most of whom live on less than $1 a day despite the region's oil riches.
"Children are going to bed hungry, water and forests are being polluted," Douglas said. "Burning down villages may only provoke more violence."
FMCDH(BITS)
Sounds like Muslims on the attack again.
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