Army trades fire with militant groups in Niger Delta

An army helicopter gunship on routine patrol in Nigeria’s turbulent Niger Delta region exchanged fire on Friday with militants active in the oil-rich zone, military officials said. A joint army, navy and air task force charged with maintaining security in the southern oil-producing region said in a statement on Friday the helicopter returned fire when it was shot at by armed men the military said were shielding a barge siphoning crude oil from a pipeline. It was the second army strike on alleged smuggling barges in three days. “While on routine air patrol today the armed militants giving protection to these illegal bunkering barges…opened fire on the helicopter gunship, and this equally attracted response from the [joint task force],” said Major Said Hammed, task force spokesman. The militant group Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), which claims to fight for local control of oil wealth in the impoverished region, said it was the group trading fire with the Nigerian army. “Our units there were authorised to shoot down this craft which they attempted with rockets and machine gun fire,” MEND said in an e-mail statement. “The chopper immediately abandoned its mission and fled. We cannot at this point be certain if it was hit.” The incident came one day after residents in the Niger Delta area said an army helicopter strike on Wednesday had injured several people, leaving six unaccounted for and presumed dead. In the Wednesday incident, two helicopters struck at what the government said were smuggling barges but the attack hit Perezouweikoregene community near the oil town of Warri, community spokesman Perezouweikore Ebiwei told reporters on Thursday. “The helicopters just arrived in the community and started shooting. We don’t know what we have done to warrant the attack.” One person had an arm cut off by shrapnel and six people are missing, Ebiwei added. The military spokesman Hammed confirmed that army helicopters had been in action in the area but said they were targeting smuggling barges. “Helicopters on routine patrol in the area sighted the barges being used to steal oil and fired to put them out of use,” he said in explaining Wednesday’s strike. The oil-rich Niger Delta region has long been wracked by unrest, but oil industry officials and other observers say in recent months the violence has entered a far more intense phase, turning into what one human rights activist called “guerrilla warfare.” Armed groups recently vowed to take control of the region’s oil resources by force. Security agencies believe oil smuggling finances weapons used by ethnic militants and gangsters active in the region. Nigeria estimates that at times as much as 10 percent of its daily output of 2.5 million barrels is stolen from pipelines by gangs who sell the crude illegally to vessels waiting offshore. Tension has been particularly high in the delta since early January when MEND kidnapped four foreign oil workers and attacked several oil facilities. MEND freed the hostages after 19 days, during which President Olusegun Obasanjo refused their demands to free detained leaders of the Ijaw ethnic group, the biggest tribe in the delta. MEND accuses Obasanjo of continuing oppression by successive governments that has left the region among the poorest in Nigeria despite its oil wealth.