Red Cross: 100 killed in Nigeria clashes

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.

Emmanuel Ijewere, president of the Nigerian Red Cross, said the situation had calmed after troops and riot police flooded into the town.

“We have reason to believe the number of people who died are close to 100,” he said. The government has refused to give a casualty toll.

Bands of youths from the rival Ijaw and Itsekiri ethnic groups had turned the streets of Warri – a key oil centre and home to many international oil workers - into a war zone as they clashed with automatic weapons.

It was unclear what set off the latest bloodletting, but violent clashes have become increasingly frequent in Warri as militias fight over distribution of the Niger Delta’s oil wealth.

Ijaws claim President Olusegun Obasanjo’s government favours their Itsekiri rivals in the distribution of political patronage and other benefits that flow from oil operations in the oil-rich delta.

The Delta State government said yesterday that he had secured a ceasefire between the two sides.