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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
‘BODIES EVERYWHERE’: The incident occurred at a Filipino festival celebrating an anti-colonial leader, with the driver described as a ‘lone suspect’ known to police Canadian police arrested a man on Saturday after a car plowed into a street party in the western Canadian city of Vancouver, killing a number of people. Authorities said the incident happened shortly after 8pm in Vancouver’s Sunset on Fraser neighborhood as members of the Filipino community gathered to celebrate Lapu Lapu Day. The festival, which commemorates a Filipino anti-colonial leader from the 16th century, falls this year on the weekend before Canada’s election. A 30-year-old local man was arrested at the scene, Vancouver police wrote on X. The driver was a “lone suspect” known to police, a police spokesperson told journalists at the
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has unveiled a new naval destroyer, claiming it as a significant advancement toward his goal of expanding the operational range and preemptive strike capabilities of his nuclear-armed military, state media said yesterday. North Korea’s state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said Kim attended the launching ceremony for the 5,000-tonne warship on Friday at the western port of Nampo. Kim framed the arms buildup as a response to perceived threats from the US and its allies in Asia, who have been expanding joint military exercises amid rising tensions over the North’s nuclear program. He added that the acquisition
RSS