Army accused of razing Nigerian village

Nigerian militants have accused troops of razing a village in the oil-producing Niger Delta and threatened reprisals.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) says in an email to media that no one was killed in the Army's attack on the village of Elem-Tombia in Rivers state because the residents had fled.

"In the light of this attack on a helpless community, we are at present considering reciprocal action against the military or oil installations in Rivers," a MEND spokesman said.

But Sagir Musa, Army spokesman in the Rivers state capital Port Harcourt, said: "There is no truth in the story that the military have attacked any community in the creeks".

MEND fighters fought two gunbattles with troops in Rivers on Wednesday, killing 17 soldiers.

The militants had said earlier they would not instigate any further fighting but would respond only to actions by the military.

The Niger Delta, which produces all the crude from the world's eighth-biggest exporter, has a long history of militant attacks on oil facilities and kidnappings of oil workers that have sometimes been followed by Army raids on villages in the creeks.

Violence flared up in the vast wetlands region this week after a relatively quiet September.

On Monday, about 70 militants from another group attacked a convoy of boats supplying Royal Dutch Shell oil fields in Rivers.

The gunmen killed at least 10 soldiers and abducted 25 Shell contractors, who have now all been freed.

On Tuesday, gunmen invaded a residential compound for contractors with ExxonMobil in neighbouring Akwa Ibom state, killing two Nigerian security guards and kidnapping four Britons, a Romanian, a Malaysian and an Indonesian.

A diplomat says the captives are in good health and that the kidnappers have demanded a ransom for their release.

- Reuters