Nigeria’s main militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), yesterday accused the government of indiscriminately bombing villages in the oil-producing Niger Delta as a flare-up in fighting continued.
“Sunday ... revealed the desperation of the Nigerian armed forces in a war it has no way of winning,” MEND spokesman Jomo Gbomo said in an e-mailed statement. “The world witnessed the indiscriminate use of missiles and bombs on several defenseless Ijaw communities in Delta state.”
The militants and the government have been issuing claims and counter-claims about military victories, which are hard to verify because of travel restrictions in the Niger Delta.
However, a spokesman for the Ijaw National Congress, which represents the Niger Delta’s largest ethnic group, backed up MEND’s statement and accused the military of killing over a thousand civilians.
“They ... bombard entire communities from the air, sea and land,” Victor Burubo, spokesman for the Ijaw National Congress, told the BBC.
The Nigerian military denied the accusations.
Hostilities between MEND and government troops have escalated since Wednesday, when clashes broke out and an affiliate of the militant group seized the MV Spirit, a tanker chartered by the Nigerian National Petroleum Corp.
The Nigerian military said it freed 13 of the hostages — four Nigerian and nine Filipino — on Friday when it attacked a camp belonging to General Tompolo, the leader of the MEND faction who took the hostages.
However, MEND said that two hostages were killed in the crossfire and that it would hand the bodies over to the Red Cross. The released hostages said that the two dead men were Filipino.
MEND said that General Tompolo had survived the attack and had relocated to another camp with his men.
The militant group, which last week issued an ultimatum to oil companies to leave the Niger Delta, on Sunday said it had blown up two oil and gas pipelines in the heartland of Africa’s biggest energy industry but there was no independent confirmation of this.
MEND and other groups operating in the Niger Delta say they are fighting for a better share of wealth from the oil-rich region for local residents, who say the oil industry has ruined their agriculture and fishing livelihoods.
However, the government says the rebels are criminal gangs intent on stealing oil or making money through extortion. Expatriate workers are often kidnapped for ransom or for use as human shields.
Attacks on oil facilities and workers have cut oil production in Nigeria, one of the world’s largest crude oil exporters, by around 20 percent since 2006.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian army said on Sunday it had freed four more foreign hostages from the western Niger Delta during an operation to flush out militants that rights groups say has displaced thousands of villagers.
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
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
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
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of