Troops patrol Port Harcourt after clashes

Heavily armed soldiers, naval officers and marine police are patrolling Port Harcourt, the hub of Nigeria's oil industry, after weekend gunbattles between rival gangs left at least three people dead, police said on Tuesday. Residents said the fierce fighting broke out in the early hours of Sunday morning in the Marine Base area of town and several hundred people had fled to safety in other neighbourhoods. "Three fatalities were recorded and a policeman and a soldier were wounded but the situation is now under control," Sylvester Araba, the state police chief, told reporters. Seven people have been arrested, he said. "There is no cause for alarm. Residents of these areas can now go about their normal legitimate concerns. We have our men on the ground and they have the capacity to deal with these miscreants," the police chief added. The oil rich Niger Delta, with Port Harcourt at its centre, produces almost all of Nigeria's 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. But industry experts reckon that up to 10 percent is lost to gangs who tap into pipelines and fill barges with stolen crude to sell to tankers waiting offshore. While the government tries to clamp down on the practice known as "bunkering", the rival gangs battle for a bigger share of the illegal spoils. Clashes between the different groups are frequent. "One gang came from the creeks and started shooting at the other group after an argument, I don't know what it was about," Lucy Momoh, a 33-year-old living in Port Harcourt, told IRIN on Tuesday. "We heard the deafening sounds of gun fire and then managed to leave the area," she said, adding that several houses built around the coastal waters had been destroyed by rocket fire. A study commissioned by Shell from international security company WAC Global Services earlier this year estimated that 1,000 people were killed in the Niger Delta every year. This puts violence in the region on the same scale as that it Colombia and Chechnya, it said, threatening both the oil industry in Nigeria, the world's seventh largest producer, as well as national security.