Nigerian troops, oil militants in battle again

Nigerian troops clashed with militants attempting to attack an oil flowstation in the southern oil-rich Niger Delta, leaving some fighters dead, an army spokesman said on Friday.

"Our soldiers gathering at the flowstation at Benisede were attacked. They returned fire and killed some of them. I do not have the figure but no soldiers were wounded," army spokesman Mohammed Yussuf told Xinhua by phone.

Thursday's fight at the flowstation, which had been closed down by Royal Dutch Shell during the four-month crisis in the Niger Delta, came days after the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) released three foreign oil workers they held for five weeks.

Jomo Gbomo, a self-described spokesman for the MEND, said the clash had no link with their members.

"There has been no confrontation so far between our units and Nigerian soldiers," he said in an e-mail to Xinhua.

In the past four months, militant attacks on oil facilities in the Niger Delta have forced Nigeria to cut production by 630,000 barrels per day, or a quarter.

Source: Xinhua