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Assaults in Nigeria kill 10

Coordinated assaults on two police stations, a hotel and a restaurant early on Tuesday killed at least 10 people, the authorities said, shattering a brief New Year's Day calm in the violent and oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

At least four police officers were among the dead, along with several of the attackers, who were believed to be members of a street gang known as the Niger Delta Vigilante, police officials said. A security guard at the Hotel Presidential, a popular haunt of government officials in Port Harcourt, was killed as gunmen sprayed assault rifle fire at the lobby.

The gang is one of several heavily armed, violent groups, known in Nigeria as cults, that have played havoc on the streets of Port Harcourt, the capital of Nigeria's oil industry, in recent years.

The Niger Delta has long been a violent place, and militant groups have been trying for years -- using tactics like kidnappings of foreign oil workers and bombings of oil production facilities -- to force the government to hand a bigger share of the country's oil wealth over to the region that produces it.

Despite pumping out an average of more than 2 million barrels of oil a day, the Niger Delta is one of the poorest and least developed parts of Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and most populous country.

The gangs believed responsible for much of the recent violence, including the attacks on Tuesday, are separate from the politically motivated militant groups but arose out of the same miasma of corrupt misrule that has characterized the region for decades.

They have different leaders and aims, but share some of the same members, weapons and patrons.

The gangs have been fighting among themselves and against the country's security forces for dominance on the streets of Port Harcourt and the attentions of politicians, who have in the past two national elections used the gangs as private militias to rig elections and provide security.

The violence was so bad in August that one hospital received dozens of gunshot victims in two weeks. A crackdown by the military and a curfew appeared to calm the city for a time.

The attacks on Tuesday were believed to be a response to strikes by the Nigerian military on the headquarters of the Niger Delta Vigilante in the town of Okrika, near Port Harcourt, which is home to the gang's leader, Ateke Tom.
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