Posted on 08/16/2003 9:53:36 PM PDT by BlackJack
LAGOS, Nigeria - Gunbattles between rival tribal militias have killed at least 20 people in Nigeria's southern oil port city of Warri, forcing the authorities to impose a nighttime curfew, witnesses and police said Saturday.
Fighting between ethnic Ijaw and Itsekiri rivals that erupted on Friday night continued into Saturday, with the rattle of automatic weapons sending residents fleeing.
By afternoon, police and troops in armored vehicles had restored some order, but at least 20 dead lay in the streets, according to one witness.
"I counted 12 bodies on one street alone and later saw an additional eight bodies removed by the police from another street," Tunde Orisade, a journalist in the city, told The Associated Press. He said he also counted 40 destroyed houses.
A police official speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed the outbreak of violence and said a dusk-to-dawn curfew, which had been relaxed a month ago, was reimposed on Saturday.
Warri, a hub for multinational oil companies in Nigeria, has seen more and more political and ethnic violence, much of it over the region's oil wealth.
Ijaws claim that President Olusegun Obasanjo's government favors the Itsekiris in the distribution of political patronage and the benefits of oil operations in the Niger Delta.
In March, violence between Ijaw and Itsekiri militants killed more than 100 people in villages near the city.
That fighting forced oil companies to cut nearly 40 percent of the 2 million barrels of oil Nigeria pumps daily.
Some of the production has been restored but several facilities, accounting for more than 300,000 barrels of oil daily, remain shut despite an increased security presence around the region's oil installations.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer and the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports. Most of the oil is drilled in the southern Niger Delta.
Activists and community groups accuse Obasanjo's government of colluding with oil companies to deny poor villagers a share in the region's oil wealth.
Since Obasanjo was elected in 1999, religious, ethnic and political violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives.
The poor villagers think they have it bad? Heck, Exxon and Chevron not only don't share their oil wealth with me but they make me pay to use their products!
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