Several killed as militants storm oil platform

LAGOS - Several people were killed when suspected ethnic militants stormed a Nigerian oil platform yesterday, extending a three-week spate of attacks which has hit output in the world's eighth-largest exporter.

Dozens of heavily armed men invaded Royal Dutch Shell's Benisede oil flow station in speed boats, exchanged fire with troops, torched two housing blocks and damaged oil processing facilities before leaving, authorities said.

Some attackers and soldiers protecting the platform were killed in the gunfight, a top military official said.

"There was an attack. There was a fight there, an exchange of fire," Brigadier-General Elias Zamani, who heads a military task force in the southern delta, said.

"We lost some soldiers and some of the other boys were killed also."

A senior oil industry official said four soldiers and two cooks working at the plaftorm were killed.

A diplomat said recent attacks and kidnappings targeting Nigeria's oil industry appeared to be co-ordinated by one group which has demanded more oil revenue for the Niger Delta and the release of two ethnic Ijaw leaders. It has theatened to halt Nigeria's 2.4 million barrels per day of oil exports altogether.

The previously unknown group known as Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta said on Sunday it had 5000 active fighters.

"We seek control of our resources to improve the lives of our people," the email statement said. "We are committed to destroying the capacity of Nigeria to export oil."

It promised to carry out another attack shortly that would "set Nigeria back 15 years and cause incalculable losses".

Shell evacuated Benisede and three other flow stations after Sunday's attack, but oil output was unaffected because the stations were already closed after the suspected militants bombed a major crude oil pipeline nearby last Wednesday.

However, Sunday's attack will delay repairs to the 100,000 barrel-a-day Trans-Ramos pipeline, which had been expected to resume pumping to the Forcados tanker terminal on Monday or Tuesday, the senior industry source said.

"It may mean a prolonged outage," he said.

The firefight occurred as a team of government negotiators began talking to kidnappers, believed to be from the same group, who abducted four foreign oil workers from an offshore oilfield operated by Shell on Wednesday.

The contract workers - an American, Briton, Bulgarian and Honduran - are being held in the Agoro district of Bayelsa state, in the south of the country, a government spokesman said.

Colleagues of the captive workers said they feared a heavy-handed military response to Sunday's bloodshed could endanger their lives.

"With the human shield the militants have, such a high-handed approach could lead to disaster," said one.

The militant group has demanded the release of Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, an Ijaw militia leader who faces treason charges, and Diepreye Alamieyeseigha, a former delta governor who was impeached last month for money laundering.

"His alleged offences are indeed criminal in a sane society but ours is indeed insane. The president is a thief, so is his vice president," the group said.

- REUTERS