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Nigeria death toll about 100
22/08/2003 21:05 - (SA)
Lagos - Street battles between rival ethnic militias in Nigeria's volatile southern oil port of Warri killed about 100 people and injured another 1 000, the Red Cross said on Friday, citing witness accounts and body counts.
Government authorities have refused to give estimates of the toll in five days of violence.
Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross, said the situation had calmed after authorities flooded the city with troops and riot police, enabling the humanitarian agency to piece together the extent of damage done in the fighting.
"We have reason to believe the number of people who died are close to 100," Ijewere told The Associated Press.
Another 1 000 people were injured while more than 4 000 people were displaced, most of them from homes that were burned in the violence, Ijewere said.
The Delta State government said on Thursday it had secured a cease-fire between militant Itsekiri fighters and rival Ijaw belligerents.
Bands of youths from the two neighbouring ethnic communities had battled with automatic weapons in the streets of Warri, a major base for oil multinationals.
Although it was unclear what set off this latest bloodletting, violent clashes have become increasingly frequent in Warri as militias fight over distribution of the Niger Delta's oil wealth.
Ijaws claim President Olusegun Obasanjo's government favours their Itsekiri rivals in the distribution of political patronage and other benefits that flow from oil operations in the oil-rich delta.
Nigeria is Africa's largest oil producer and the source of one-fifth of US oil imports.
Most of the oil is drilled in the southern Niger Delta.
- SAPA
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