100 die in Delta fighting, Red Cross says

The Nigerian Red Cross said on Friday about 100 people were killed in five days of ethnic violence that rocked the southern oil city of Warri. The federal government meanwhile set up a task force protect oil wells in the area and crack down on the massive theft of crude oil from pipelines. The shadowy figures behind this racket are widely believed to have flooded the Niger Delta with sophisticated weaponry that used by the tribal gangs to attack each other and the government's security forces. Fighting erupted between rival militias of the Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups on 15 August, defying a night curfew declared by the Delta State government. Gangs of armed youths armed with automatic rifles engaged each other in a series of gun battles. Calm returned to the city on 20 August as troop reinforcements arrived. The Delta State government said it had persuaded the warring groups to agree a truce. "With calm now returning to the city we are beginning to see the extent of the damage and have reason to believe close to 100 people died," Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Red Cross told IRIN. He said more than 1,000 people had been treated by the Red Cross, mostly for minor injuries, while more than 4,000 had been displaced from their homes. President Olusegun Obasanjo said on Friday he had set up a special military task force to pacify the volatile oil-producing region. Its primary task will be to secure oil installations and stop criminals from stealing crude from pipelines for sale in the international market. This ilicit trade in stolen oil is believed to be the source of funds for guns which are now awash in the Niger Delta, said Colonel Ganiyu Adewale, the defence ministry spokesman. "The task force will do anything we believe is necessary to stop the violence," he told IRIN. Delta State Governor James Ibori met with leaders of the Ijaw and Itsekiri communities on Friday to firm up the truce agreed earlier in the week. But leaders of the militant Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Communities (FNDIC) refused to attend the meeting, saying they doubted the governor’s neutrality. Bello Oboko, president of FNDIC told IRIN the latest fighting in Warri was sparked-off by Ibori’s order for Ijaws to quit the MacIver area of the city. This is claimed by Itsekiris. "Ibori cannot broker any peace agreement that will be binding on the Ijaws," he told IRIN. At the heart of the violence are claims and counter-claims to the ownership of oil-rich land in a region whose inhabitants are still mostly dirt poor. The individuals and communities who control the land mop up the many benefits that can be extracted from the oil companies whose wells have been drilled there. Fighting between Ijaws and Itsekiris in March left at least 100 people dead and forced oil companies operating in the swamps of the Niger Delta to shut down facilities that produce 40 percent of Nigeria's oil exports. Ijaws accuse Obasanjo's government of favouring the Itsekiris, giving them the best of government patronage and most of the few amenities given to the impoverished region.