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Gunbattles in Nigerian oil city
03/05/2003 14:06 - (SA)
Warri, Nigeria - Gunbattles could be heard in the southern Nigerian oil city of Warri for the second day on Saturday as voting was due to start in state assembly elections, an AFP correspondent in the city said.
Although some electoral officials could be seen moving around the city before dawn, there was no sign of any open polling station by 10:30, he said, two-and-a-half hours after the election was due to start.
Meanwhile gunfire could be heard from two parts of town, and navy troopers had sealed off one of the main roads through the town that passes by a wharf and naval base which were the scene of fierce fighting on Friday.
Fighting broke out on Friday when armed ethnic Ijaw militants, who have vowed to disrupt all attempts to hold elections until their political grievances are met, approached the town in speedboats, residents said.
In the ensuing gunbattle around the naval base, several militants were killed when the navy fired a rocket launcher at one of the boats, witnesses and naval personnel said.
Last month, Ijaw attacks disrupted polling in presidential and parliamentary elections and forced the Anglo-Dutch giant Shell and US-based ChevronTexaco to suspend their operations in the nearby Niger Delta swamps.
At the height of the trouble, Nigeria's oil exports, Africa's biggest, were cut by more than 40%. Production has yet to return to normal.
On Saturday, Nigeria was due to hold assembly elections in each of its 36 states.
The Ijaw militants are opposed to the vote, claiming that the distribution of electoral wards in the area southwest of Warri discriminates in favour of the neighbouring Itsekiri people.
- AFX
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