Several die as troops and Delta gunmen exchange fire

At least five people died on Tuesday in Warri, southern Nigeria, in a shootout between troops and unidentified gunmen, military officials said. Brig-Gen Elias Zamani, who heads a joint armed forces task force sent to Warri last year to quell fighting between ethnic militias, said soldiers who responded to “persistent firing” by some armed youths from a section of the town came under fire. “The exchange of fire that followed between the soldiers and the militant youths resulted in the death of four militant youths and the arrest of 79 persons,” said Zamani. He said the violence was not related to an ethnic crisis that has rocked Warri in the past seven years, but was “a criminal act” by some armed youths. Warri residents quoted eyewitnesses as saying that more than 20 people had died in Tuesday’s clash. Joel Bisina, who heads the non-governmental Niger Delta Professionals for Development, said the killings resulted from a brawl between troops and local youths in the Awor neighbourhood, inhabited mainly by people from the Ijaw ethnic group. He said the fight broke out after a soldier refused to pay for marijuana he had bought from a local drug dealer. According to Bisina, the soldiers called for reinforcements from their barracks and a truckload of troops arrived on the scene. They “opened fire indiscriminately in the neighbourhood, leaving more than 20 dead” and several others injured, he said, citing witnesses. David Reje, another resident of Warri and an official of the Ijaw Youths Council, said the soldier who had died in the shootout had “refused to pay for Indian hemp (marijuana)” he had smoked, thereby provoking the violence. The oil-rich Niger Delta region, of which Warri is a part, has been the scene of repeated clashes over the past seven years, most of it pitting members of the Itsekiri ethnic group against their Ijaw or Urhobo neighbours. At least 200 people were killed in fighting between the rival ethnic groups last year, including soldiers deployed to quell the violence. Much of the fighting has been over claims to the ownership of land on which oil companies operate. The community which owns such land stands to benefit from jobs and various local amenities provided by the oil companies. But there have also been repeated clashes between troops and militant youths. Residents often accuse the military of human rights abuses, including extortion and extrajudicial killings.