Five killed in oil attack
2006-01-18 16:17
Lagos - Five soldiers were killed and nine missing after militants attacked an oil station belonging to Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell in southern Nigeria, an army spokesperson said on Wednesday.
"I can confirm that we lost five men while nine are still missing. We cannot presume those missing are dead until their corpses have been found," Colonel Mohammed Yussuf said.
He said the militants opened fire on the soldiers on Sunday when they attacked the Benisede flow station while the soldiers retaliated, killing "a large number of them".
Yussuf said security agents were on the trail of the killers and those who had last week kidnapped four foreign oilmen and sabotaged a Shell pipeline.
On Tuesday, President Olusegun Obasanjo set up a security committee to effect the release of the hostages - an American, a Briton, a Bulgarian and a Honduran.
The men were seized from an offshore supply vessel on January 11 by armed separatists and are thought to be hidden in the creeks of the Niger Delta by a group that has demanded the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders.
"We have been given a marching order to fish out the militants and free the hostages. It is an immediate response by the joint task force made up of the army, navy, air force and police," he said.
The week-long crisis in the Niger delta has seen Shell cut its production by 211 000 barrels of oil per day, more than eight percent of Nigeria's total output, and contributed to the upward pressure on oil prices which have touched three-month highs.