Two American oil workers were killed when a speedboat full of gunmen fired on a boat carrying the employees in Nigeria’s violence-wracked oil delta, an army spokesman said today.

Tens of thousands of police and army troops guarded voting stations today as Nigerians cast ballots in tense municipal elections already marred by assassinations and other deadly attacks.

Nigeria’s president deployed tens of thousands of police and army troops on foot and in armoured cars today, appealing for calm on the eve of countrywide municipal elections already marred by assassinations and other attacks.

Oil giant Royal Dutch/Shell today said it planned to streamline its operations in Nigeria, cutting jobs in a bid to boost oil production by half a million barrels a day.

Two of seven foreign oil workers kidnapped by ethnic militants in Nigeria’s volatile oil delta have been released, a state government official said today.

About 100 people were killed and 1,000 wounded in five days of street battles in the southern Nigerian port of Warri, the Red Cross said today.

A sharp escalation of ethnic violence in Nigeria’s oil-rich delta has killed 38 people in the past two weeks, prompting a military buildup in the troubled region of swamps and mangrove forests – and leading multinationals to abandon one-sixth of the country’s production for more than four months.

Crude oil from a ruptured pipeline oozed across farms and into a creek in southern Nigeria, unleashed by what residents and officials said was tampering by unidentified saboteurs.

PRESIDENT Olusegun Obasanjo surged ahead of his main challenger, Muhammadu Buhari, yesterday in partial returns from Nigeria’s presidential elections, which were marred

Militants vowed to prevent voting today in a broad swathe of Nigeria’s oil delta during elections that pose a test for civilian rule in Africa’s most populous nation.

Royal Dutch/Shell Group has warned squatters living near its pipelines to leave the area, in an effort to avoid a repeat of an explosion which three years ago left hundreds dead.

A group of women occupying a series of ChevronTexaco oil pipelines in southeastern Nigeria say they have freed their two hostages.