At least 12 dead in Nigeria oil city violence : officer
LAGOS (AFP) — At least 12 people were killed over New Year in Nigeria's oil capital Port Harcourt when gunmen attacked two police stations and a hotel, a military officer in the city said Wednesday.
"For now what we are looking at is between 12 and 16 dead in total," the officer, who asked not to be named, told AFP, adding that the total included both civilians and police.
"As for the militants, we know we killed some, but we don't know how many exactly," he said.
Local media advanced death tolls ranging from 13 to 18.
Rivers State Police Chief Felix Ogbaudu for his part said he was sticking with the death toll of 10 he had given at a press briefing Tuesday.
"I said six militants and four policemen were killed," Ogbaudu said.
Asked to comment on the death toll of 18 advanced by some media, he said: "I don't know where these people get their figures from".
Local media said Ateke Tom, the head of a local armed group, the Niger Delta Vigilante Movement (NDVM), had claimed responsibility for the attack.
They quoted the NDVM leader as saying the attack was in retaliation for recent raids by the security forces on one of his hideouts in the creeks.
The latest violence followed the lifting Sunday of a curfew on the city that had been in place since the last fighting there four months ago.
In a separate incident Tuesday a petrol tanker overturned and burst into flames in Port Harcourt, destroying dozens of houses and small shops. Residents said no one was killed in that incident.
Elsewhere in Nigeria, local media reported that two people were killed and five other injured at New Year in an attack by armed robbers on a district of Lagos, the commercial capital, and that several other people were killed the same day in the southern Edo state in inter-community violence.
