| Another chapter in the "Keep up the Economic Pressure on the Infidels Project"? Or just the usual display of ignorance and brutality by ignorant brutes? |
Soldiers in gunboats clashed with ethnic militants in the rivers of Nigeria’s oil delta Friday, and militants and villagers claimed that dozens of fighters and civilians were killed. A navy spokesman denied there were casualties.
| "Nah. We didn't hit nobody..." |
Nigeria’s military regularly plays down ethnic, political and religious violence in an effort to stem retaliatory attacks. On two occasions - in 1999 and 2001 - authorities denied army massacres of hundreds of civilians until witness accounts made them indisputable. Political, religious and ethnic unrest has killed more than 10,000 since President Olusegun Obasanjo was first elected in 1999, ending 15 years of brutal military rule.
| How many'd it kill before Ollie was elected? |
On Friday, residents of Port Harcourt, the oil-rich Niger Delta’s main city, reported hearing pre-dawn gunfire at the time of the attack. Port Harcourt is several miles from where the clashes occurred. Hundreds of soldiers and police have deployed to the nearby villages of Ogbakiri, Buguma and Tombia since last week, apparently to stem months of fighting between two rival ethnic Ijaw militant factions. Villagers in Oduoha said they woke to gunfire before dawn. Community leader Lloyd Eyime said he went outside his house and saw soldiers in gun-mounted speedboats firing upon his riverside community. "They have been burning houses and shooting at people, both young and elderly," Eyime said. Residents fled into mangrove swamps and dense bush. When Eyime returned, he said, he found about 30 bodies lying about the otherwise abandoned village. A senior navy official in Port Harcourt denied anyone had been killed or injured. Most villagers deserted their communities during fighting before security force members began arriving, he said.
| "Nope. Didn't get the chance to kill nobody!" |
"We’ve been sending troops there since last week. They heard we were coming and they deserted towns and villages. There has been no killings. Everything is quiet," the navy officer said, speaking on condition he not be identified.
Nigeria is the world’s seventh-largest oil exporter and the fifth-largest source of U.S. oil imports.
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