Villagers flee Nigeria delta violence

WARRI - Villagers fled Nigeria's lawless delta yesterday amid fears of military reprisals after a wave of attacks on foreign oil companies by ethnic Ijaw militia.

The Army deployed more troops to key installations and oil companies tightened security around offices a day after heavily armed men stormed the headquarters of Italian oil firm Agip, robbing a bank on the premises and killing eight policemen and one civilian.

"There are soldiers everywhere and I don't want my three girls in the firing line," said Return Powei, from the remote village of Ogbotobo. "Our youths run into the forest when they hear the soldiers are coming. Everyone is moving out of Ogbotobo."

It was not clear if the attack on Agip, a unit of Italy's ENI, was the work of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, whose five-week campaign of sabotage and kidnapping has helped push world oil prices to four-month highs.

The movement said it would make Royal Dutch Shell suffer unless it paid US$1.5 billion ($2.22 billion) to delta villages in compensation for decades of oil pollution.

The Government has set up a committee to negotiate the release of four foreign oil workers - an American, Briton, Bulgarian and Honduran - kidnapped from a Shell oilfield on January 11.

- REUTERS